How Furiosa went from a scrapped anime series to a big screen blockbuster

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga from director George Miller has finally premiered on the big screen, with emphasis on finally. The latest entry in the weird and wild Mad Max universe, starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth, has been in development for some time, but the project wasn’t initially planned as a movie. Rather, Miller envisioned it as an anime series almost a decade ago, only for this idea to crumble.

The story of Furiosa dates back to the creation of Mad Max: Fury Road, which itself was worked on for decades. Per Miller during a chat with Time Out, Mel Gibson, the star of the original Mad Max trilogy, was even considered to return as Max Rockatansky at one point.

Come the mid-2010s, however, Miller’s first Mad Max title since 1985’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome became a reality with Tom Hardy as the lead. The film also received a tie-in comic, a Mad Max video game, and a tale starring one of the feature’s new characters, Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa, was being laid out.

Miller revealed to Polygon that Furiosa’s story was actually completed before Fury Road even started shooting, recalling, “So we wrote a story about Furiosa from the time she was taken as a child, as she refers to in Fury Road, until she became the Imperator Furiosa. That ended up as a full screenplay, with concept art and so on.”

With that, he decided the anime route was the best option to bring Furiosa’s origin to life. Fury Road concept artist Maeda was then enlisted to create the show’s aesthetic. Unfortunately, with the delay of Fury Road, the Furiosa anime was put on the back burner and eventually scrapped entirely.

Miller told Polygon he felt “there was no point in making an anime” due to Fury Road‘s halt. In time, some of Maeda’s artwork made it online, giving fans an idea of what could’ve been. Meanwhile, Miller maintained that a Furiosa-centric story should come to fruition, and come to fruition it did.

After a dispute regarding unpaid salaries on Fury Road was resolved, Miller began developing the ill-fated Furiosa anime as a movie. He overhauled the plot entirely, recast Taylor-Joy for the lead instead of de-aging Theron, and assembled a supporting cast of franchise veterans and newcomers alike. It was a long, winding road to get here, but at last, Furiosa has a gritty, post-apocalyptic spotlight all her own.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is now playing exclusively in theaters.