Even before it entered Early Access on January 19, Pocketpair’s monster-collecting survival game Palworld was widely being referred to as “Pokémon With Guns.” But mere days after launch, modders have already taken steps to really drive the comparison home by adding actual Pokémon characters to the mix.
The long-awaited third entry in the Tron franchise is finally heading into production. Six years after it was first announced that Jared Leto was in talks to star in a Tron project called Tron: Ares, the movie was all set to start filming last August – but then it had to wait out the writers and actors strikes. With those strikes over, the production is ready to go now – and Deadline reports that The X-Files star Gillian Anderson has signed on to join the cast. Details on the character she’ll be playing have not been revealed.
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales director Joachim Rønning is at the helm of Tron: Ares. In addition to Leto and Anderson, the film also stars Evan Peters (Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story), Greta Lee (Past Lives), Cameron Monaghan (Gotham), Sarah Desjardins (Yellowjackets), and Jodie Turner-Smith (Queen & Slim). We’ve also heard a rumor that Cillian Murphy might be reprising his Tron: Legacy role to be the villain in this film.
Scripted by Jesse Wigutow and Jack Thorne, Tron: Ares is said to tell the story of the emergence of a sentient program that crosses over into the human world that is not ready for contact. Leto is playing Ares, “the manifestation of the program.” As Deadline puts it, Ares is “a fictional character who crosses over from the world of videogames to planet Earth.”
For twenty-eight years, director Steven Lisberger’s cult classic Tron was a standalone sci-fi adventure. Then in 2010 Joseph Kosinski took fans back to the world of Tron with the film Tron: Legacy – and since then things have been a bit messy. Kosinski wanted to make a third Tron film, to be called Tron: Ascension, but Disney cancelled the project when their movie Tomorrowland underperformed. Apparently the script for Tron: Ascension would have featured a character named Ares… and somehow the idea for that character has evolved into Tron: Ares. Kosinski had said that he had nearly given Leto a cameo in Tron: Legacy, in the End of Line club where Lisberger did make a cameo.
Leto is producing Tron: Ares with Emma Ludbrook and Jeffrey Springer. Russell Allen serves as executive producer.
Are you interested in Tron: Ares? What do you think of Gillian Anderson joining the cast? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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Glen Powell’s star is on the rise since his fun, antagonistic performance in 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick. You can currently see him steaming up the screen with Sydney Sweeney in Anyone But You, plus he’s due to chase storms in the semi-sequel Twisters, and you can also now get a look at him in the new Richard Linklater film, Hit Man. While the generic-sounding title seemingly leads you to a kind of film you think you may have seen already, much like the similarly titled The Killer from David Fincher that starred Michael Fassbender as a hitman, the trailer is actually mysteriously an upbeat, fun romp with loads of critical praise plastered throughout. Glen Powell stars in the film as well as co-writing the screenplay with director Richard Linklater.
The trailer has been released from Netflix and the synopsis reads,
“A mild-mannered psychology professor (Glen Powell) interested in electronics takes a sideline bugging undercover cops in sting operations, specializing in setting up phony hits. When the usual undercover guy is suspended, he’s enlisted to pose as a hitman. He turns out to be a natural at undercover work, with the police using him to entrap people taking out contracts. Things get complicated when he falls for an abused wife (Adria Arjona) wanting to take out her husband.”
According to Entertainment Weekly, “Hit Man is based on a 2001Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth, whose journalism previously inspired another Linklater movie, Bernie.” Linklater told EW, “I asked Skip, ‘Is it true?’ And he goes, ‘There’s never been a case of someone arrested for being a hitman.’ That was 2001, so I have followed really closely over the years. Whenever I see an article about someone getting arrested for taking out a hit, I check it, and it’s always another person getting arrested by an undercover officer. But no one ever figures out from there that hitmen don’t exist.” Linklater remarked on what set his film apart from other contract killer movies, “We deconstruct the hitman film. Isn’t that funny? Those films are basically crime dramas, but we’re the one based on real events — and we’re a comedy!”
Our own Chris Bumbray glowed about this movie in his film review from the Toronto International Film Festival, saying, “Notably, despite being a movie about killing, the film is pretty non-violent and charming. If there was ever a feel-good movie to be made about murder-for-hire, this is it.” You can read the rest of his review HERE.
Hit Man is set to premiere on Netflix in select countries on Friday, June 7, after a limited theatrical release.
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I don’t know of many Christmas horror adaptations. Sure, I could probably look at the history of Krampus and piece something together but other than that I’m hard pressed so let me know in the comments what I could cover next holiday season. Winter in general has all sorts of movies and stories that they are based off of. The very first episode of this show was all about The Thing and its source material Who Goes There and now in the middle of winter, at least in Colorado, I think it’s time to look at one of the better vampire properties of the 2000s and a great limited series comic. 30 Days of Night was originally pitched as a movie but when it was turned down, the comic came out and put the author’s name on the map. As is the nature of Hollywood, it got adapted into a movie anyway and even received a direct to video sequel a little bit after. Both are dark, gritty, original pieces of media but how close does the movie stick to its pulpy counterpart? Find a place to hold up for 30 days of night as we find out what happened to this adaptation.
The Movie
The journey for 30 Days of Night (watch it HERE) was not an easy one. The original concept from author Steve Niles was pitched as a comic but there were no takers. He then tried to move it as a film or TV property which also fell through. After he had to shelve the idea for a time, publisher IDW came around and wanted to publish the idea as a limited miniseries of comic books. Once it was a published property, Niles found it much easier to shop the idea around. There was bidding on it and finally horror royalty Sam Raimi won the rights to make an adaptation of it in 2002. His company that would later become Ghost House hired Niles to write the screenplay which was completed in March of 2004. The next month he was asked to re-write it and Stuart Beattie was brought in to do an additional draft which Niles ended up really liking.
Director David Slade was attached to the movie in September of 2005 with yet another writer brought in to do yet another script in March of 2006. Brian Nelson’s script was approved and the movie was shot that summer. Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, and Danny Huston were the lead cast members but it also starred Ben Foster, Mark Boone Junior, and Mark Rendall. Rendall made his debut in kids TV that included a sizable chunk of time on Arthur and for horror also appeared in the incredible TV adaptation of Hannibal. He still does quite a bit of TV into the early 2020s. Mark Boone Junior has become one of the best THAT GUY character actors we have. Depending on the type of stuff you watch, you could know him from his best-known property of Sons of Anarchy or like me know him from that time he was split down the middle in John Carpenter’s Vampires. Ben Foster is a powerhouse of a performer that I feel doesn’t get enough credit. He’s incredible in 3:10 to Yuma and Hell or High Water and for horror showed up in things like Pandorum and the Dead Zone TV series.
Danny Huston is another fantastic actor that I don’t think gets discussed enough and is wonderful as the main vampire here. He is also in The Number 23 and American Horror Story for us gore fans and great other movies like Children of Men and The Proposition to name a couple that I really like. Josh Hartnett has had an interesting career that has come back into focus with his part in Oppenheimer but started his career in Halloween H20. He has worked in Penny Dreadful, The Faculty, and Black Dahlia with a ton of other movies thrown in too. Finally, Melissa George is an Australian actress who I first saw in Dark City but is also great in Alias, The Amityville Horror, and a cool indie horror called Triangle. Behind the camera, director David Slade was a music video guy first, but his movie Hard Candy really got him noticed and three years after this movie, he directed an entirely different type of vampire movie with The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Stuart Beattie also wrote Collateral and the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie while Brian Nelson also did Hard Candy and Devil. The movie opened in October of 2007 and received decent reviews but more importantly 75 million on its 30-million-dollar budget.
The Story
30 Days of Night started out as a 3 issue short series written by Steve Niles and illustrated by Ben Templesmith. IDW is the publisher, and all 3 entities own the rights to the IP. As stated above it was shopped first as a comic and then as a movie before coming back around as a comic again. Steve Niles hadn’t done too much up to the release of 30 Days of Night but did write a graphic novel adaptation of Richard Matheson’s seminal I Am Legend which became popular again after the release of today’s work. He really took off and published 12 titles in 3 years after the release of Night and worked steadily into 2020. Templesmith has worked with Niles on a few other projects but also worked heavily on the 30 Days of Night universe. He is a multi-Eisner award nominee and has done other things like game books and what I didn’t know at the time but found out after doing the research is he did one of my favorite Dead Space graphic novels too.
The actual 30 Days of Night property has done very well for itself. It had 10 comic collections released between 2002 and 2009, two film adaptations, an audio adaptation, a novelization of the movie, and two mini-series added after the fact too.
What is the Same?
The story takes place in the Alaskan town of Barrow where the residents prepare for the time of year where darkness rules for nearly 30 days. Sherrif Eben starts finding strange things happening around the town such as all cellular phones being destroyed and the appearance of a vagrant stranger to the town who warns the residents but also is the one that scouted ahead and led a group of killers to their town. It turns out that this group of killers is actually a group of vampires led by Marlow who decided to take advantage of the long-lasting darkness to feed on the poor residents of barrow. They also take out some of the power stations and slowly close in on the rest of the townsfolk who hide away and slowly get picked off one by one.
Sheriff Eben decides that there is really no other way to deal with the vampires than becoming one himself and injects some of their blood into his own stream. He turns but has enough humanity left to realize he needs to take out the vampire group and goes for their leader. After a fight in which some of the other vampires are killed too, Eben emerges victorious and saves the remaining townsfolk before admitting he doesn’t want to remain the undead forever. He sits with his wife Stella and watches the sunrise only to die like vampires do. In addition to the basic overall plot with mostly similar names, the movie and book share a very similar dark tone. The art style of the comic is almost minimalist in what it shows while still being an incredibly violent and gory piece of literature. The movie matches this tone with the vampires looking lifeless but simultaneously brutal. There is a washed-out tone that fits with the forever night feeling.
What is different?
A surprising amount was changed here considering both how shorth the source material is and the fact that the author had a lot to do with the movie. The book stranger that comes into town seems to be almost vampire already and is killed by Eben and his team while in the movie, he talks about how he expects the vampires to turn him and make him one of their pack. He is also killed by Marlow when the vampires go to investigate the jail. Marlow in the movie is the leader of the vampire crew but in the comics, he is actually killed by Vicente who comes to Barrow to clean up the mess that Marlow has made. He finds out about the mission through emails and there is a whole other group that is trying to prove the existence of vampires. Eben kills Vicente in the climactic fight instead of Marlow.
The movie also focuses on a handful of other side human characters while the comics just focus on the vampire’s story and lore and Eben and Stella on the human side. Speaking of Stella and Eben. In the Comics they are happily together but the movie adaptation has them separated and Stella almost getting out of dodge on the last flight before missing it and coming back. Ebens family is also a much stronger presence in the movie and ties back to what I said about the other characters getting more screen time and story. This gives the movie much higher stakes in my opinion and is almost more tragic as we care about the people of Barrow and their families more on screen.
Legacy
This is a tough one because if we are just talking about legacy in terms of entries, the comic has the movie beat by a mile. It’s universe was expanded by multiple authors and the lore of the vampires within creates an entire universe to explore. The movie got a direct to video sequel that really isn’t too bad and sits in a weird time for vampire movies with it’s ultra violence being juxtaposed with the Twilight movies romantic teenager nonsense. When I think about which one I prefer, I go with the movie. While the comic is much deeper and a good, original story, its also just a lot to get through and keeps asking new questions with each new entry. The movie is a solid snow/winter tale that I can just throw on without much thought and is a fun movie to recommend to people looking for something a little different. It expands enough on the story in it’s relatively lengthy runtime of 114 minutes while delivering on the gore and monster action we crave. The comic is good, original, and extensive but the movie is just a lot more fun to get through.
A couple of the previous episodes of WTF Happened to This Adaptation? can be seen below. To see the other shows we have to offer, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
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Soon after the release of M3GAN back in January, it was announced that the team behind the film – Universal Pictures, Blumhouse Productions, and James Wan’s production company Atomic Monster – were aiming to replicate M3GAN‘s January theatrical success by setting a January 2024 release date for their supernatural thriller Night Swim. The movie reached theatres at the start of this month – and didn’t manage to go over as well or get as much attention as M3GAN did. While M3GAN earned over $180 million during its theatrical run, Night Swim (read our review HERE, check out our Night Swim interviews HERE) has only pulled in about $37 million at this point. Now the movie is heading to the small screen, as it’s getting a VOD and digital release this week, on January 23rd. If you want to watch the movie in the comfort of your own home tomorrow, it will set you back $29.99 on Amazon.
Bryce McGuire wrote and directed Night Swim, which is based on a short film he made with Rod Blackhurst back in 2014. The feature version of the story is built around the hidden source of terror found in an iconic backyard swimming pool. The film has the following logline: No running. No diving. No lifeguard on duty. No swimming after dark.
Here’s the synopsis: Ray Waller, a former major league baseball player forced into early retirement by a degenerative illness, moves into a new home with his concerned wife Eve, teenage daughter Izzy, and young son Elliot. Secretly hoping, against the odds, to return to pro ball, Ray persuades Eve that the new home’s shimmering backyard swimming pool will be fun for the kids and provide physical therapy for him. But a dark secret in the home’s past will unleash a malevolent force that will drag the family under, into the depths of inescapable terror.
The feature version of Night Swim stars Wyatt Russell (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier), Kerry Condon (The Banshees of Inisherin), Amélie Hoeferle (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes), and Gavin Warren (Fear the Walking Dead).
James Wan and Blumhouse founder Jason Blum are producing Night Swim while working on merging their companies. Atomic Monster’s Michael Clear and Judson Scott serve as executive producers alongside Blumhouse’s Ryan Turek. Alayna Glasthal is overseeing the project for Atomic Monster.
The 2014 short film version of the story starred Megalyn Echikunwoke (Night School 2018) and had the following synopsis: What better way to relax after a hectic day in the office than a long and cool night swim under the stars? Immersed in the aqueous element like a fetus inside the mother’s womb, the unsuspecting Eve enjoys the water in the privacy of her house; however, she is not alone. Apart from Margot, her cat, an intangible menace in the form of a shadowy night watcher observes from afar–invisible like the midnight breeze, yet very real. Is Eve in danger? Is this her last dive? It had a running time of just 4 minutes.
Will you be watching Night Swim now that it’s getting a VOD and digital release? Let us know by leaving a comment below – and if you have already seen the movie, let us know what you thought of it!
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Brotherhood is a theme so overt in Final Fantasy XV that it’s the title of the game’s five-episode prequel anime. An outlier in a series that usually leverages expansive and diverse casts, FF15 instead focuses entirely on a road trip with four lads. Tehy spend most of their time cruising around in a convertible,…
Brotherhood is a theme so overt in Final Fantasy XV that it’s the title of the game’s five-episode prequel anime. An outlier in a series that usually leverages expansive and diverse casts, FF15 instead focuses entirely on a road trip with four lads. Tehy spend most of their time cruising around in a convertible,…
Plot: Gal Dove and Don Logan are best friends and small-town thieves living the good life in ‘90s East London. Deedee Harrison is a captivating adult film star whose ambitions to control her own personal destiny and her love affair with Gal Dove put her in danger. Teddy Bass is a treacherous, rising name in the gangster world who seduces Gal and Don into his criminal web.
Review: Of all the films I never expected to get a prequel, Sexy Beast would never have occurred to me. The 2001 crime movie, director Jonathan Glazer’s feature debut, focused on a pair of former friends whose lives have drifted apart since they were thieves working for a London crime boss. That film was barely a blip at the domestic box office but garnered critical acclaim and an Oscar nomination for Sir Ben Kingsley. Since Sexy Beast, screenwriters Louis Mellis and David Scinto reunited with stars Ray Winstone and Ian McShane for the less acclaimed film 44 Inch Chest. Two decades later, Sexy Beast is back with Mellis and Scinto aboard as executive producers for a 1990-set foray into the origin story of Gal, Don, and Teddy Bass. Sexy Beast is more than just an attempt to milk intellectual property. Instead, it is a solid crime drama with well-placed callbacks to the modern classic movie that inspired it.
Without any context for the feature film, Sexy Beast opens with little connection to the 2001 film. Right off the bat, we meet Gary “Gal” Dove, played by James McArdle, and Don Logan, played by Emun Elliott. Gal is engaged and in a rut, as he faces a life of settling down with his fiance. Gal and Don make decent money as small-time thieves, something Don’s controlling and abusive sister, Cecilia (Tamsin Greig), wants to change. Cecilia sets Gal and Don up with up-and-coming gangster Teddy Bass (Stephen Moyer), who has an intricate plan involving a local politician and a pair of criminal siblings. Teddy offers a lucrative partnership with Gal and Don, something Gal is unsure he wants to be a part of. Don, however, wants the wealth and notoriety that working for Teddy could bring, which pits the two friends at odds. This is further complicated when Gal meets DeeDee Harrison (Sarah Greene), a porn star whom Gal instantly falls in love with. In the feature film, we know that Don works for Teddy, Gal is married to DeeDee and living in Spain, and little else. Sexy Beast worked perfectly as a movie, and this series fills in those blanks despite there being no need to in the first place.
What I noticed immediately in the first episode of Sexy Beast was the physical similarity that James McArdle shares with Ray Winstone. With bleached blonde locks and a scruffy beard, both actors could convincingly play the same role decades apart. They share line delivery, mannerisms, and an opening shot of them in very different pools. On the other hand, Emun Elliott is much different than Sir Ben Kingsley’s take on Don Logan. This series wastes no time in showing us that Don has a screw loose and could snap at any minute, but the younger Don is not the sociopath his older self is in the movie. Here, Don struggles under his older sister, Cecilia, who delivers lines through the eight-episode series that are direct quotes from the feature film. The dynamic between Cecilia and Don is reminiscent of Norma and Norman from the series Bates Motel, and that twisted relationship led to dark places. Equally, Ian McShane’s chillingly psychopathic take on Teddy Bass is given more depth here by Stephen Moyer. However, I found the added back story for the gangster to detract from the mysteriousness McShane lent his performance.
As much as Sexy Beast is a story about a heist and criminal enterprise, the series is heavily focused on the romance between Gal and DeeDee. The movie positions the pair as star-crossed lovers, and the series wastes little time getting the sparks going between the two. A solid amount of time is spent on DeeDee dealing with issues within the porn industry as well as the challenge of Gal already being engaged to be married. Sarah Greene does some of the best work here as she delves into the fairly underdeveloped character in the feature film. The rest of Gal’s family, who factor into his personal life and how it clashes with his career as a criminal, are not nearly as endearing as they are intended to be and offer some of the weakest elements of the series’ narrative. Gal’s clash with his younger sister throughout the series takes up much screen time and ends up as filler compared to the much more interesting arcs for Don, Teddy, and more. Even within this prequel series, we get flashes even further back to the childhood days of some characters, which adds depth and some sympathetic elements for characters I did not want to feel anything for, like Don and Teddy.
Michael Caleo, whose prior credits include writing for The Sopranos and Rescue Me, wrote more than half of the episodes of Sexy Beast and directed the first three. Co-writers include Jennifer Cacicio, Lee Patterson, Ollie Masters, and Juliet Lashinsky-Revene, while David Caffrey, Alex Eslam, and co-star Stephen Moyer helmed the remaining episodes. Moyer directed the finale after previously helming episodes of True Blood and the series Flack, starring his wife Anna Paquin. The series is rooted in London during the early 1990s. Still, aside from the music that factors heavily into every episode, the era is a requirement in preceding the feature film’s narrative. The eight-episode season works as the start of an ongoing series as it ends in a place still a long way from where the movie started. Still, it also feels like it has used much of its strongest material, leaving a second season in the difficult position of transitioning the story to where Jonathan Glazer’s film takes over.
Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast remains among the most impressive directorial debuts of the last twenty-five years. This prequel series arrives just as the filmmaker is back in the limelight with his acclaimed film The Zone of Interest. While Glazer has zero involvement with this series, it is respectful of the movie and does not do anything to detract from its standing as one of the best British films in recent history. As a series, Sexy Beast is a standalone crime drama with intriguing characters and a plot worth investing in. However, I garnered more enjoyment out of the show because of the connections I found with the feature film. I would love to see if a second season of Sexy Beast can improve upon the first, but I hope audiences will discover this show and seek out the brilliant movie that inspired it even more.
Sexy Beast premieres on January 25th on Paramount+.
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As Kingpin once said, “The people need to be reminded that the city belongs to me.” And apparently all of the Kingpin reading material belongs to Vincent D’Onofrio, who has consumed just about every piece he can get his hands on.
Speaking with ComicBook.com, D’Onofrio said, “I’ve seen everything that involved [Wilson] Fisk that’s up to this point. I mean, there’s some of the new runs, the Kingpin runs that I haven’t looked at yet, but as far as everything, any canon that connects Fisk I’ve read.” We sense a little slacking from D’Onofrio, but then again, considering just how much Kingpin material is out there, we can’t entirely fault him for falling behind.
As far as which Kingpin works have grabbed his attention the most, D’Onofrio pointed to the legendary Frank Miller, who wrote Daredevil’s Born Again storyline in 1986. “The [Frank Miller] runs were always very exciting for me. And I found early on before I met David [Mack, creator of Marvel’s Echo], I found some of his stuff and the first couple of paintings that he did of Fisk were really, really truly inspiring. I didn’t get to tell him that for a while, but eventually, I did get to tell him, and then he was just super helpful with turning me onto maybe stuff that I didn’t have or anything that he offered his help.”
Kingpin first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #50 in 1967 when D’Onofrio was just eight years old. The actor first took on playing the character (aka Wilson Fisk) in Netflix’s Daredevil series, reprising him on Hawkeye and most recently on Echo. He is set to return once again for Daredevil: Born Again, currently set for 2025. Prior to D’Onofrio, Kingpin was most notably played by Michael Clarke Duncan in the 2003 Daredevil movie, although he had been featured in Marvel media properties since the ‘60s, having first been voiced by Tom Harvey on Spider-Man.
The actor recently went to work to settle any fan concern of the behind-the-scenes troubles surrounding Daredevil: Born Again, saying in part, “Every cool project I’ve been involved with has evolved constantly during pre-production, production and post. It’s just reported on these days as if it’s big news. It’s not. It’s simple a bunch of creatives doing their best to get it right. It’s a constant in this business. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Frankly I’d be worried if we were settling for less.”
How do you think Vincent D’Onofrio has done as Kingpin? Does he deserve a standalone movie?
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When Mad Max: Fury Road was released by Warner Bros. back in 2015, Mad Max saga mastermind George Miller already had ideas for more Max Rockatansky stories and a prequel that would focus on the Furiosa character. Unfortunately, before he could move forward with any of them, his production company had to take WB to court over unpaid Fury Road earnings, an issue that slowed things down for years. The problem was finally resolved and now, nine years after Fury Road, the prequel Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga has made its way through production and is set to reach theatres on May 24th. In anticipation of the film’s release, we have compiled a list of everything we know about this one – and you can check it out right here:
STORY
Directed by Miller from a screenplay he wrote with his Fury Road co-writer Nico Lathouris, Furiosa has the following official synopsis: As the world fell, young Furiosa is snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and 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. While the two Tyrants war for dominance, Furiosa must survive many trials as she puts together the means to find her way home.
Miller and Lathouris wrote the script long ago; in fact, Miller has said that it was “virtually complete” even before Mad Max: Fury Road started filming in 2012. The story begins 15 years before the events of Fury Road and spans across those 15 years, leading directly into the previous film. As for why this story is being told, Miller has said, “When we wrote Mad Max, the task was to tell a story that was always on the run and to see how much the audience could pick up in passing. That was one of the tricks of Mad Max: Fury Road, that there would be references to things of where she’s from, why they’re doing things, but it was always on the run. There were very few moments of quiet. We never explained how she lost her arm. We never explain what the actual Green Place Of Many Mothers was. We never explained the workings of the Citadel. So we had the screenplay virtually complete before we shot Fury Road, and we did it because it arose out of wanting to explain to everybody who Furiosa was—to Charlize Theron when she took on the role, and to all the actors and the designers and everybody else working on the Citadel and so on. The feeling was, gee, this is a pretty good screenplay, and then I kept saying to myself, ‘if Fury Road works, I’d really like to tell this story.’ So it came about, I’m not going to say accidentally, but it came out of a need to explain [Fury Road’s] world which essentially happened over three days and two nights. It’s really trying to explain how that world came to be.“
There’s a chance that parts of this story may be familiar to Mad Max fans, as some of the prequel elements Miller had put together were published as comic books around the time of Fury Road‘s release.
ANYA TAYLOR-JOY AND CHARLIZE THERON
When he was first planning Furiosa, Miller thought he would be able to bring Fury Road‘s Charlize Theron back to play the younger version of the character and they would just do some CG de-aging on her. But, “despite the valiant attempts on Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman“, he came to the decision that CG de-aging just hadn’t been perfected yet, there’s still an uncanny valley effect when watching people who have been de-aged. So the character had to be recast. While it was rumored that Killing Eve actress Jodie Comer might be in the running to play Furiosa, the role ended up going to Anya Taylor-Joy of The Witch, who Miller first saw in Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho. Although Taylor-Joy doesn’t have a drivers license, she did perform her own stunt driving in the film.
When she learned she wouldn’t be starring in Furiosa, Theron told The Hollywood Reporter, “It’s a tough one to swallow. Listen, I fully respect George, if not more so in the aftermath of making that film with him. He’s a master, and I wish him nothing but the best. Yeah, it’s a little heartbreaking, for sure. I really love that character, and I’m so grateful that I had a small part in creating her. She will forever be someone I think of and reflect on fondly. Obviously, I would love to see that story continue, and if he feels like he has to go about it this way, then I trust him in that manner. We get so hung up on the smaller details that we forget the thing that we emotionally tap into has nothing to do with that minute thing that we’re focusing on.”
Theron and Taylor-Joy didn’t discuss their shared role until after production ended. Taylor-Joy told People, “Charlize was sweet enough — I think both of us ended up in a situation where we were both so respectful of each other that we didn’t want to reach out prior [to filming]. The second it’s over, we’re having dinner and we’re going to swap war stories for sure.“
CAST
Beyond Taylor-Joy, the cast also includes Chris Hemsworth (Thor) as the biker warlord Dementus, with Tom Burke (C.B. Strike) and Quaden Bayles (Three Thousand Years of Longing) in unspecified roles. Alyla Browne (The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart) appears as a younger Furiosa, and Nathan Jones and Angus Sampson are said to reprise their Fury Road roles of Rictus Erectus and The Organic Mechanic. IMDb has a list of characters with names like Smeg, Pissboy, War Boy, Treadmill Rat, Blackfinger, Fang, The Wretched, Corpse Minder, Mr. Harley, and Mortiflyer.
Don’t expect to see Nicholas Hoult show up as his Fury Road character Nux. As Hoult told ComicBook.com, “Going into Fury Road, I knew all of Nux’s life up until the moment we meet him in that film. And obviously as (Furiosa is) a prequel, it’s earlier. Nux would’ve maybe just about been born and I don’t think I could play a six-month-old or a year old. It would be a stretch for me.“
Hemsworth has said that working on Furiosa was “by far the best experience of my career, and something I feel the most proud of.” He came into the film exhausted, wondering how he was going to get through it, but as soon as rehearsals started it reignited his creative energy. “It made me think, the work isn’t what’s exhausting, it’s what kind of work it is, and how invested I am in it and if it is challenging in the right way.”
FURY ROAD REUNION
Miller, Lathouris, Jones, and Sampson aren’t the only Fury Road holdovers on Furiosa. The films also share editor Margaret Sixel, production designer Colin Gibson, sound mixer Ben Osmo, makeup designer Lesley Vanderwalt, costume designer Jenny Beavan, and composer Junkie XL.
BIGGEST AUSTRALIAN PRODUCTION
Furiosa was the biggest production ever for Australia, surpassing the $150 million production of Baz Luhrmann’s Australia (which was recently reworked into a mini-series called Faraway Downs). It created 850 jobs and brought $350 million AUD (around $230 million USD) to the local economy. Miller is producing the film with Doug Mitchell.
MORE MAX STORIES
While it seems clear that he’s not a major character, Miller has never said whether or not Max Rockatansky will be making an appearance in Furiosa, but he did say, “Max is lurking around somewhere in this story.” If you’re more interested in seeing Max than you are in seeing Furiosa, don’t worry: Miller has said that he has two more Max stories in mind, one of them being the Mad Max: The Wasteland movie he was already mentioning by name back in 2015.
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