One of the best and most underrated action movies of the decade is revving up its engines again on the 
Netflix global chart. Years after everyone believed director George Miller had delivered his last Mad Max movie, Tom Hardy brought the character previously played by Mel Gibson back to life in Mad Max: Fury Road. Hot on the wheels of the franchise’s most successful entry, Miller returned with a prequel, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Now the 90% RT-scored dystopian movie is at number 9 on the Netflix chart and begging for you to give it another spin.
Directed, produced and co-written by Miller, who wrote the screenplay with Nico Lathouris, Furiosa goes back into the past, to uncover the story that led to Fury Road. Starring Anya Taylor-Joy (The Queen’s Gambit, Peaky Blinders) as the titular apocalyptic warrior previously played by Charlize Theron in Fury Road, and MCU favorite Chris Hemsworth as the villainous warlord Dementus, the supporting cast is made up Tom Burke, Alyla Browne, Lachy Hulme, and Nathan Jones among others. The synopsis of the movie reads:
“Snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers, young Furiosa falls into the hands of a great biker horde led by the warlord Dementus. Sweeping through the Wasteland, they come across the Citadel, presided over by the Immortan Joe. As the two tyrants fight for dominance, Furiosa soon finds herself in a nonstop battle to make her way home.”
‘Furiosa’s Box Office Struggle Has Put the Franchise Back on Hold
Despite landing strong reviews – audiences rated it a high 88% on the Rotten Tomatoes Popcornmeter – Furiosa was not the kind of box office hit that gets future movies greenlit. The high praise sadly came from a reduced number of paying moviegoers, and the film languished with a $173.8 million worldwide haul that made it a box office bomb thanks to its $168 million budget. Miller has plans for another installment entitled Mad Max: The Wasteland, but whether he gets the chance to make it seems to be out of his control. Back in February, Miller said of the next stage of the franchise:
“We’ve got another script. But having been doing this long enough where I’m habituated to storytelling, I find myself with way too many stories — not only in my head, but in the form of screenplays or at least very detailed notes that are within reach of screenplays. I’m a professional daydreamer, really. This was seen as my big deficit as a kid: ‘George would do better at school if he didn’t daydream so much’ was on my report card.
So, there’s lots of stories. Indeed, one of them is a Mad Max. It is not something I would do next, because there’s two things I’m keen to do next. But if for whatever reason the planets align, you can never tell. Too often, you’re lining up to do a movie and then something happens. Some things fall into place and some don’t, so all I can say is we’ll see.”
- Release Date
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May 24, 2024
- Runtime
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149 minutes
- Producers
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Doug Mitchell