KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 23 — Quaden Bayles, the Indigenous boy with dwarfism whose battle with bullying touched the world, will appear in the latest instalment of the Mad Max film franchise.
The 11-year-old has been casted by director George Miller in his upcoming movie Furiosa, a prequel to his 2015 post-apocalyptic action hit Fury Road, Daily Mail reported.
Bayles's move to the big screen follows a successful entry into Instagram, where he now commands 288,000 followers and can get up to US$2,600 (RM11,666) per sponsored post.
Besides Furiosa, which is set for release in 2024, the boy would also appear in another of Miller's films Three Thousand Years of Longing starring Idris Alba and Tilda Swinton.
Furiosa is the fifth film in the Max Max series which began with Mel Gibson playing the title character in 1979.
Miller had been quoted as saying that he was moved to put Bayles in front of the camera after his mother Yarraka Bayles posted a distressing video of her son to Facebook in February 2020.
In the video, Quaden, who was born with a type of dwarfism known as achondroplasia, was sobbing uncontrollably and asking for a knife to kill himself after being bullied at school.
The viral video caught the attention of celebrities around the world and they threw their support behind Quaden and his family's fight against bullying.
Australian actor Hugh Jackman said he would be Quaden's friend in a video on Twitter. The X-Men star went on to urge his fans to be kind to one another.
US comedian Brad Williams also helped to raise more than US$700,000 (RM3.14 million) for Quaden through a GoFundMe page to send him and his mother to Disneyland but they gave the money to charity.
