Veering from Mad Max, George Miller debuts '3,000 Years'

CANNES, France (AP) — It’s taken a lot of time and a good deal of yearning for Australian director George Miller to make “Three Thousand Years of Longing, ” his long-awaited follow-up to “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Miller premiered “Three Thousand Years of Longing” over the weekend at the Cannes Film Festival, the culmination of a journey that began 20 years ago when Miller first read the A. S. Byatt story upon which the film is based, “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye.” But it was only when frictions over the profits from “Fury Road” — Miller’s operatic action opus — opened a window that the time came for “Three Thousand Years of Longing.” “After we wrote it, it was really a question of when to do it,” Miller said alongside his stars, Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton, shortly before the film’s premiere in Cannes. That’s like a seed that one plants.” To Miller, “Three Thousand Years of Longing” doesn’t just lead up to now — it goes beyond.