Three Thousand Years of Longing, the New George Miller Movie, Is Full of Magical Weirdness

Most people know George Miller as the director of the Mad Max films and, even more so, the definitive action movie of all time, Mad Max: Fury Road. However, George Miller has had a robust and insanely varied career, and his next film, Three Thousand Years of Longing, is a perfect example of that in its first trailer. The movie stars Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba, and the trailer shows a movie that is lightyears different from Fury Road and yet looks just as fantastic.

The movie is based on the short story “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” by A.S. Byatt, and Swinton plays Dr. Alithea Binnie, a solitary woman who stumbles upon a genie in a bottle, played by Elba. Upon releasing the genie, aptly named Djinn, she is granted three wishes but is hesitant to use them as she’s seen / read / heard basically every story about how wishes always turn out badly. So Djinn tells her stories about previous wishes in order to convince her to make hers, but the end result shocks both of them.

Miller, who wrote the film alongside his daughter Augusta Gore, has a wide variety of producer credits to his name on a slew of genres. But this will be his first directorial dive into something outside of Mad Max and children’s fare (He directed Babe and Happy Feet.) since the early ’90s, and it looks absolutely wild and yet packed with heart. The visuals are, of course, stunning, but it seems like there’s a lot more behind this than just looking pretty. Hell, the entire concept of needing to be convinced to make a wish is pretty interesting, which is probably why Miller has been trying to make this movie for 20 years.

Don’t worry, Mad Max fans. Miller is still working on the prequel film Furiosa, which was in pre-production while he produced this film, and Mad Max: The Wasteland is still in the works as well. In fact, the creative team behind Three Thousand Years of Longing is basically just all Miller’s favorites from Mad Max: Fury Road. Junkie XL wrote the score, which sounds really dope in the Three Thousand Years of Longing trailer, and John Seale came out of retirement to act as cinematographer.

Three Thousand Years of Longing will land in theaters on August 31 after premiering at this year’s Cannes.