George Miller Says Three Thousand Years Of Longing Has A Guaranteed Wide Theatrical Release

George Miller Says Three Thousand Years Of Longing Has A Guaranteed Wide Theatrical Release

MGM

By Joshua Meyer/May 22, 2022 8:19 pm EST

“Three Thousand Years of Longing” made its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival this weekend, and our own review of the film was positive, calling it “a fantastic and poignant story about storytelling, longing, and love.” The film marks Miller’s first since “Mad Max: Fury Road,” which ranked high on /Film’s list of the best movies of the 2010s. “Fury Road” came out in 2015, however, and the ensuing rise of streaming services, coupled with the pandemic, have shortened the theatrical windows for many films to the point where some of them only have a limited or simultaneous release.

“It would be very painful to know that your movie will be first seen on streaming. There’s a commitment that they can’t change. MGM will release it at the end of August in 2,000 cinemas. There’s been no deal that MGM has made to stream the movie. At this moment, it will be a theatrical release. Seeing it in that cinema [the Palais], with that sound, that group of people, and knowing every little bit of work that we put into it, will be available to the audiences.”

What would you wish for?

“Three Thousand Years of Longing” is adapted by Miller and co-writer Augusta Gore from the short story “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” by A.S. Byatt. Swinton plays Alithea, a narratologist who describes herself as “a solitary creature by nature.” She’s a world traveler and chooses a memento in the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul that happens to be a bottle housing Elba’s genie — or Djinn, as he’s more properly known.

Djinn offers Alithea the typical three wishes, talking about hidden desires and asking the typical genie question of, “What is your heart’s desire?” But as someone who traffics in human storytelling (being a narratologist and all), Alithea recognizes, “There’s no story about wishes that is not a cautionary tale.”

As the conversation about storytelling goes beyond this film and its source material, the subject naturally came up in Miller’s interview with Variety, where he expressed optimism about the future of cinema, saying:

“Three Thousand Years of Longing” is in theaters on August 31, 2022.

“I think congregations of people telling each other stories has evolved since early man. Cinema just has to adapt to it.”