Furiosa director George Miller what his film withheld from the Furiosa anime

Reports of the original version of the upcoming action film have been circulating for over a decade Furiosa – an anime series that director George Miller and writer Mahiro Maeda were working on while developing Mad Max: Fury Road. During a question and answer session after a recent press screening for Furiosa: A crazy Max Saga At the IMAX headquarters outside Los Angeles, Miller revealed that while the anime series eventually evolved into a live-action film, a small element survived from the defunct project, drawn from early character sketches of Furieweg concept artist and anime stalwart Maeda.

Miller revealed that the script for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga was finished before he even filmed Furieweg. “To tell that story coherently, we had to know everything that happened in the time before (the film started),” he said. “So we wrote a story about Furiosa from the moment she was taken as a child, as she mentions in Furieweg, until she became the Imperator Furiosa. That ended up as a full screenplay, with concept art and so on. And the actors, the designers and the whole crew got the script of it before they started filming Furieweg.”

That unusual production route led to the additional screenplay being considered an anime project Furieweg concept artist Maeda – best known for his work on Gospel 3.0 And Kill Bill – creating designs for the series. His art has been shared online since 2015then the movie version of Furiosa It was thought to be as dead as the anime project. “We thought about making it into an anime, and that’s one of the reasons why it was so well developed,” Miller said. “But then Furieweg was delayedso there was no point in making an anime.”

The only element from that concept art that actually made it to the finals Furiosa movie: an unexpected accessory worn by Chris Hemsworth’s evil warlord, Dementus. The imposing figure carries a teddy bear chained to his body and places it on the dashboard of his vehicle as he drives around in his war column. After being exposed to the elements of the Wasteland, it’s a pretty beat up bear, but it’s an important part of its appearance. We won’t go into the origins of the teddy bear; The best way to experience this is by watching Furiosa – but we can say that its positioning underlines its importance.

“That teddy bear – (Maeda) started doing some illustrations and put that bear in there,” Miller said during the post-screening Q&A. “And then that became part of the story. So that was there before Furieweg.”

The juxtaposition of the cuteness of the golden stuffed animal with the dynamism of Dementus’ chains and oiled muscles feels very much like the kind of cartoonish, comedic element an anime series would add to these characters. It adds an unexpectedly cute element to the brutality of Furiosa‘s war-torn landscape. The film’s aesthetic sensibilities also lean heavily on anime influences, from the characters’ dramatic action poses in the posters to the hyper-stylized desert steampunk costumes.

The teddy bear is not just a stylistic decoration either. It is deeply connected to Dementus – and ultimately to his relationship with Furiosa and the 18-year story of the Furiosa film explains. It all becomes clearer when you see how Hemsworth’s shaggy teddy bear plays a role in the film’s post-apocalyptic action epic. Furiosa will be in cinemas from May 24.