Mad Max: Fury Road was one of the best action films – scratch that, best films – of the last decade. A lot of its success was down to the performances of Tom Hardy as Mad Max and Charlize Theron as Furiosa.
It could all have been so, so much different. Fury Road infamously spent a ridiculously long time in development hell and back in the early 2000’s, the franchise’s director George Miller had two extremely different actors in mind for the lead roles.
The revelation came via New York Times writer Kyle Buchanan, who shared a teasing snippet from his forthcoming book, Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road, on social media.
In the tidbit shared on Twitter, Miller revealed that he already wanted to move on from original Mad Max Mel Gibson for being “too old” in 2001. Instead, he envisioned Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in Fury Road. James Nicholas, Miller’s assistant at that time, said “I remember putting Brad Pitt’s face on Mel’s Road Warrior body, just to see what it would look like.”
That would have been absolutely stunning casting. With hindsight, it’s also a massive Hollywood sliding doors moment: when Miller proposed casting Pitt and Jolie, the pair hadn’t yet met on the set of Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), which is where they reportedly fell in love and birthed “Brangelina”.
Brangelina in MAD MAX: FURY ROAD? Here's a little tease from my mammoth FURY ROAD book, out 2/22, which details how the film almost came together in 2001 with some *very* different stars considered: https://t.co/kR8BlGyd7D pic.twitter.com/zpKmYHXcAp
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— Kyle Buchanan (@kylebuchanan) February 1, 2022
Everything worked out in the end though. Hardy grunted his way through Fury Road in 2015, while Theron was so impressively fierce some as Furiosa that a prequel based around her character was commissioned.
Simply titled Furiosa, filming is expected to begin this year for a release date of 2024, with actress-of-the-moment Anya Taylor-Joy set to replace Theron in the lead role.
Who would have been better in Fury Road, Pitt and Jolie or Hardy and Theron? Pitt and Jolie would almost certainly have gotten on better than the latter pair did.
Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road is set for release on February 22nd, 2022. It can be pre-ordered here.
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Watch a classic scene from Mad Max: Fury Road:
