George Miller gave audiences a glimpse at his film adaptation of the A.S. Byatt short story “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” on Friday with the release of the new trailer for Three Thousand Years of Longing.
The befittingly anticipated entry from the Mad Max: Fury Road director, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Augusta Gore, stars Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton. The trailer’s release coincides with the film’s debut at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, where it screened out of competition.
Swinton plays Dr. Alithea Binnie, an academic who runs into a Djinn (played by Elba) while in attendance at a conference. Elba’s character then offers Dr. Binnie the chance to make three wishes, an opportunity she initially meets with hesitancy.
Ahead of the film’s release this summer, Miller gave an interview to Deadline wherein he revealed the early inspiration that later launched Three Thousand Years of Longing occurred not long after the initial release of Byatt’s short story in 1994.
The film, per Miller, is “certainly a palate-cleanser” for Mad Max: Fury Road.
“And there was a lot of pressure to go straight into another [Mad Max movie],” he told Deadline this week. “In a way, things got chaotic with the studio going through changes of regimes, and I knew I really wanted to make this film regardless.”
When sharing the trailer on Friday, Elba said it had been “great to work with George Miller on this.”
