Mad Max: Fury Road spin-off Furiosa to star Anya Taylor-Joy
The actress will take over the Charlize Theron role in the origin story of the renegade warrior.
Anya Taylor-Joy will take over the Charlize Theron role in Furiosa, a feature-length spin-off of the Oscar-winning 2015 blockbuster Mad Max: Fury Road.
Mad Max creator George Miller told Deadline that the renegade warrior Furiosa had a detailed back story and now that story is being explored in the Warner Bros movie.
It's not clear why Theron isn't playing the role of Furiosa herself.
The movie will track the genesis of Furiosa before she teamed up with Max Rockatansky in Fury Road and will co-star Chris Hemsworth (Thor, Avengers Assemble) and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (Aquaman, Watchmen, The Matrix 4) in a movie that Miller will direct, co-write and produce with his longtime producer ally Doug Mitchell.
The script has been written by Miller in collaboration with his Mad Max: Fury Road co-writer Nico Lathouris.
The US-born London-raised actress Taylor-Joy, 24, has had a break-out year in 2020, starring in Emma, The New Mutants and upcoming Netflix series The Queen's Gambit.
In the latter show, Taylor-Joy plays Beth, a teenage chess prodigy with a drug addiction in the seven-part series set in the 1950s, which streams from 23rd October.
She recently told Interview magazine how she coped with being so busy.
"I’ve had to learn to be kind to myself, and I think characters are a therapeutic way for me to do that," she said. "When Beth and I aligned, I’d had a really crazy year, because I made Emma, had a day off, then I did [Edgar Wright horror] Last Night in Soho, had a day off, and then it was The Queen’s Gambit. For the first time, I was like, 'I need to take care of myself in a very aggressive way, because otherwise I’m not going to be able to do this well.'"
Mad Max: Fury Road starred Tom Hardy in the title role and premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015 and went onto earn $375.2 million (£288 million) at the global box office.
It won six Academy Awards in 2016, including costume design, sound editing, sound design and film editing and it was also nominated for Best Picture.
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