Three Thousand Years of Longing

George Miller movie Three Thousand Years of Longing is a box office failure, and it has to do with marketing after Amazon purchasing MGM.

Three Thousand Years of Longing arguably suffered from the same problems that faced Late Night, eschewing a slow word-of-mouth-building “platform” rollout for a “big bang” wide [2,000+ screen](https://variety.com/2019/film/news/amazon-late-night-flop-bob-berney-exit-1203254436/) release for a movie unsuited to the model. Amazon was such a “ [disruptor](https://www.indiewire.com/2016/02/disruptors-how-netflix-amazon-are-creating-greater-tumult-in-the-independent-film-industry-272596/)” that it never bothered to learn the rules of the industry it entered. Indeed, the big rollout of The Rings of Power this weekend is such a big deal precisely because it’s [the rare multimedia release that does have stakes for Amazon](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-24/with-rings-of-power-amazon-amzn-bets-a-billion-that-streaming-tv-hasnt-peaked). Bradley Gorham, an associate professor at Syracuse University, [agrees](https://www.npr.org/2022/03/17/1087268067/amazon-mgm-deal), “Amazon is trying to bolster its reserves of intellectual property to take on Disney and WarnerMedia.” [less than a decade ago](https://variety.com/2013/biz/news/step-aside-netflix-amazons-entering-the-original-series-race-1200749146/), so it doesn’t have a deep library of existing content. It also doesn’t have a lot of recognizable intellectual property, which is why it is spending so much on [The Rings of Power](https://www.escapistmagazine.com/why-are-people-so-angry-about-the-rings-of-power/). shifted ownership [from AT&T to Discovery Media](https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/discovery-warnermedia-merger-close-warner-bros-discovery-1235200983/). [for decades](https://deadline.com/2022/05/george-miller-cannes-three-thousand-years-of-longing-1235020237/). Club](https://www.avclub.com/how-fury-road-became-the-movie-of-the-decade-1839965577), [USA Today](https://eu.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/movies/2019/12/26/ranked-10-best-movies-decade-get-out-mad-max/2731766001/), and [World of Reel](https://www.worldofreel.com/blog/2019/4/results) deemed Fury Road the film of the decade. [the unexpected box office hits of 2021](https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2021/08/15/box-office-free-guy-starring-ryan-reynolds-and-jodie-comer-nabs-surprising-28-million-debut/?sh=76da8c9d5308), in large part because Disney got behind it. [Everything Everywhere All at Once](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-passes-100-million-at-the-global-box-office/) and [Elvis](https://collider.com/elvis-movie-worldwide-box-office-234-million/) have been the unexpected box office success stories of the summer, the high-profile underperformance of films like [The Northman](https://gamerant.com/the-northman-shouldnt-have-failed-box-office/) and [Three Thousand Years of Longing](https://www.worldofreel.com/blog/2022/8/ekxzbj77ljbgczzfj4vaqcm9yh8e7f) suggest audiences should enjoy these eclectic movies while they can. Even allowing for [the temperate reviews](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/three_thousand_years_of_longing), it’s a film that deserves an audience.

It's no surprise, then, to find George Miller – the man behind the disparate likes of Mad Max, Babe and Happy Feet – following up the all-conquering Fury Road ...

And finally, your regular budget offerings this week are The Lego Movie at City Screen (Sat 3rd, £3.00), Shrek the Third at Cineworld (Fri 2nd – Mon 5th, £2.50), and two final outings for The Pirates! As mentioned above, this week sees a triumvirate of re-releases hitting the big screen, none bigger than Steven Spielberg’s timeless classic E.T. Also marking the big 4-0 is a film considered by many to be the best of the Enterprise’s cinematic outings, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan – you can catch it at Cineworld (Sat 3rd/Sun 4th/Tues 6th/Thurs 8th), City Screen (Sun 4th/Weds 7th), Everyman (Sun 4th/Tues 6th) and Vue (Fri 2nd/Sat 3rd/Sun 4th/Tues 6th). With re-releases of Spider-Man: No Way Home, Star Trek II and E.T. It’s easy!”) and they find themselves stranded with no way of getting back down. at Vue (Fri 2nd, Sun 4th, £2.49, or £1.25 per exclamation mark.

'Come Back Tomorrow Night and I'll Tell You'. George Miller on the destructive and healing powers of language and storytelling. By Bilge Ebiri.

And I got to know a lot of the Indigenous cultures in the areas where I was. In this film, you had to show a djinn reveal that does violate the laws of physics, and you had to find a way to make that play. What’s the best music, what’s the best architecture?” She was asked to write on literature, and she wrote a piece called “Narrate or Die.” It was specifically about the Arabian Nights, or the Thousand and One Nights, being the most significant stories of the millennium. It happened that the real events of that story tended to follow the template of the hero myth. The world was medieval, in a way, so it had to be grounded, and we had to do as much of it for real. At the end of it, and despite it having resonance internationally, I decided that was the last film I was going to make. Would you like to write on it?” We were both in the middle of other things, and we made plans to do that. [If I had tried to make the film years ago] I would have been much more stressed had we had COVID and I learned that we couldn’t shoot in Istanbul. But there was a redundancy in the cables, where if one cable or harness failed, you had to have another one, so that you could make it as safe as possible. The understanding was that we would make it when it was ready to make. In Miller’s worlds, the stories we tell, and the stories we seek, say a lot about who we are as people. I was worried that the timing of the two films were more or less one on top of the other.

"It's a yarn that's even more wildly improbable than Blackbird, woven from magic spells, court intrigue and epic romance, but George Miller has crafted a ...

Having released a Djinn (Idris Elba) from the lamp, Alithea – a pragmatic, logical woman – refuses to play along with granting of three wishes, this because every story about a genie and a lamp always backfires on the human who makes ill-considered wishes. Tilda Swinton is terrific as the hardboiled Northern English scholar who refuses to believe in the Djinn’s supernatural powers – Alithea, after all, has made a career from debunking myth and legend – but even she is outshone by Idris Elba, who is mesmerising as the gravel-toned, hulking but emotionally vulnerable genie. Having released a Djinn (Idris Elba) from the lamp, Alithea – a pragmatic, logical woman – refuses to play along with granting of three wishes, this because every story about a genie and a lamp always backfires on the human who makes ill-considered wishes.(15A) stars Tilda Swinton as Alithea, a literary scholar – a narratologist, no less – who is attending a conference in Istanbul when she picks up an unusual oil lamp in the bazaar.

SUPPORT THIS INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM The article you're about to read is from our reporters doing their important work — investigating, researching, ...

Three Thousand Years of Longing is loosely based on a 1994 novella called The Djin in the Nightingale’s Eye by A.S. Alithea’s specialty is storytelling—specifically, the narration of how stories are told. The article you’re about to read is from our reporters doing their important work — investigating, researching, and writing their stories.

In this adaptation of A.S. Byatt's The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye (penned by Miller and Augusta Gore), Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton) is an expert in ...

The willingness of Three Thousand Years of Longing to engage in the inexplicable without cynicism or wry winks to the audience to dilute the strangeness speaks to how much Miller and company want this movie to fit into the grand tradition of myths and fables. It’s not a new classic or anything like that, but Three Thousand Years of Longing is still a remarkable exploration of the power of stories. Chiefly, this is a film packed to the gills with imagination on a visual level. This is all done in the hopes of making her see the problems with wishes they can now avoid. Byatt’s The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye (penned by Miller and Augusta Gore), Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton) is an expert in narratives and literature heading off to a conference in Istanbul. This being is prepared to grant Binnie a trio of wishes, but she’s read a story or two in her life about wishes and is convinced only trouble will follow any wishes she makes.

In this phantasmagorical romance, Idris Elba plays a genie who offers a Northern, middle-aged academic three wishes. Though given Elba's survival thriller ...

FilmThree Thousand Years of LongingIn this bonkers and lavish romantic fantasy Idris Elba plays a 10ft djinn freed from a three-millennia stretch in a ...

George Miller is a filmmaker with quite a peculiar career. He began by making the “Mad Max” films and solidifying himself as a master of action cinema.

It is a timeless story that will come to be more appreciated with age. This is a story about stories. For those who love telling stories, or those who can’t help but get lost in fiction, this is a movie for you. This isn’t a story about wishes. It was quite a surprise when he returned with “Mad Max: Fury Road,” returning to action cinema as though he had never left. Afterward, he went toward other genres like comedy, drama and eventually family films like “Babe: Pig in the City” and “Happy Feet.”