It's been seven years since George Miller gave us "Mad Max: Fury Road," but before he boards its sequel "Furiosa," Miller will be tackling romance with "Three Thousand Years of Longing,” starring Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba.
The film was test-screened on Tuesday at the AMC Lincoln Square in New York City. A genie romance that will be highly polarizing is what I’m hearing. A $60 million dollar art film.
Miller examines contemporary society via the conventions of the folk or fairy tale genre. This is a film about the “impact of storytelling on storytelling,” a sort of “Arabian Nights” for our times. Another person who attended mentioned the “sensuality and eroticism” depicted in the film, and that this was Miller’s most philosophical movie to date, one that might alienate much of the fanbase he built with “Fury Road.”
Said to not be as visually-driven as ‘Fury Road’ the film tells the story of a lonely and bitter British woman who discovers an ancient bottle while on a trip to Istanbul and unleashes a djinn who offers her three wishes. Filled with apathy, she is unable to come up with a wish until his stories spark in her a desire to be loved. Her resulting wishes are not for prosperity or happy forever-afters, but for solving issues that she has to deal with in the modern world.
There is currently still no release date for “Three Thousand Years of Longing.”
Edward Berger seems to have settled on what comes next. His Lance Armstrong biopic, starring Austin Butler, is now holding casting calls, with production eyed for January.