Mad Max is back my fellow gasheads, with Oscar-winning Australian filmmaker Dr George Miller (Mad Max/Happy Feet) ramping up the road war carnage to tell the origin story of his Fury Road warrior queen: Imperator Furiosa.
In the title role of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Anya Taylor-Joy (Queens Gambit/Last Night in Soho) certainly has plenty to thank her director for.
However, he's not the only director to thank. It was her film Last Night in Soho from British filmmaker Edgar Wright that caught Miller's eye.
"When I asked Edgar about her - he didn't even ask me what film - he said 'Do it, do it, do it, she's got it all'," Miller confirmed to Newshub.
"So, she's the first person we went to."
Taylor-Joy knows what a gift that was from Wright, and it meant even more than she first let on.
"Knowing it was Edgar, who had just made a movie with me for three-and-a-half months, he really knows me. It's not like 'I met her once and she was nice'... he really knows me."
She also really knows Miller - clearly delighted to have had the time to play with her Furiosa director.
"George is just the loveliest sweetest person. Having that be the person who owns a mind as demented and wild as this? It's really fun to play with."
Taylor-Joy certainly puts the furious in Furiosa. Alongside her, Chris Hemsworth puts the demented in Dementus, the new Mad Max madman. Hemsworth had plenty of time to get his head into character. He was given the script and the part before he went into production on Taika Waititi's Thor: Love and Thunder.
"I had the script for about two years," Hemsworth told Newshub.
"The first time I met with George and got offered the part, I went off to shoot Thor: Love and Thunder. He went off to shoot A Thousand Years of Longing."
Meanwhile, Miller gave Hemsworth some Dementus homework.
"I turned up to rehearsals and didn't quite have a handle on who this character was, so he (Miller) suggested writing or journaling as the character.
"One night I woke up, put pen to paper, and didn't think much of it. Woke up and read it in the morning and I was really surprised. I showed it to George - it really informed who this guy was," Hemsworth said.
Hemsworth's Dementus has won the hearts and minds of Mad Max fans the world over - and the film has won over critics as it thunders into cinemas globally.
