It hasn’t been 3,000 years since the last George Miller movie, but it’s still been a while. And that previous film was Mad Max: Fury Road, the kind of mind-blowing cinematic vision that makes you desperate to see what the man who made it will do next.
For Miller, his next film — after seven long years of waiting — is Three Thousand Years of Longing, a story about a woman, played by Tilda Swinton, who buys a lamp that happens to contain a genie, played by Idris Elba. But is having a genie all that it’s cracked up to be? As the trailer for Three Thousand Years of Longing suggests, maybe not. Watch it below:
Well, that looks utterly awesome. Granted, there aren’t any spectacular tractor trailer crashes or doof warriors rocking out with guitars that shoot fire on top of cars made entirely out of amplifiers. But the colors, the camera movements, the amazing costumes… it has that unmistakable George Miller imagination all over it.
Three Thousand Years of Longing is about to make its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival this week; we’ll see what the reception from critics and audiences there is like. In the meantime, here is the film’s official synopsis:
Dr Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton) is an academic – content with life and a creature of reason. While in Istanbul attending a conference, she happens to encounter a Djinn (Idris Elba) who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom. This presents two problems. First, she doubts that he is real and second, because she is a scholar of story and mythology, she knows all the cautionary tales of wishes gone wrong. The Djinn pleads his case by telling her fantastical stories of his past. Eventually she is beguiled and makes a wish that surprises them both.
Three Thousand Years of Longing is scheduled to open exclusively in theaters on August 31.
