Full Title (I shortened it because Deadline's was super long)
George Miller On March Start Date For Next Film, More 'Mad Max', Defending Superheroes As Cinema & The Search For Depth That Makes Movies Like 'Fury Road' Unforgettable
on Super Hero Cinema debate
George Miller On March Start Date For Next Film, More 'Mad Max', Defending Superheroes As Cinema & The Search For Depth That Makes Movies Like 'Fury Road' Unforgettable
EXCLUSIVE: George Miller has gotten his green light and a March production start in Australia on Three Thousand Years of Longing, with Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton now locked to star. That Miller is making this film isn't a surprise: independent distributors rarely get a shot at a big-ticket film from a commercially successful auteur like Miller as he was coming off his Best Picture-nominated Warner Bros blockbuster Mad Max: Fury Road. FilmNation had a crowd eager to open their wallets for international rights when the script was shown to buyers at 2018's AFM. CAA Media Finance is selling North American and Chinese distribution rights and FilmNation is finishing overseas sales, but Miller has the money he needs to make his movie.
While the market for independently constructed films has been challenging, it has been strong for packages like this one, driven by self-generating writers and directors. That both Roland Emmerich's Midway and Rian Johnson's Knives Out raised large budgets for films that performed well at the box office bolsters the idea that distributors here and abroad are ready to pay large sums.
on Super Hero Cinema debate
"I watch all of them," Miller said. "To be honest, in terms of this debate, cinema is cinema and it's a very broad church. The test, ultimately, is what it means to the audience. There's a great quote I saw that applies to all we do. It was from the Swahili storytellers. Each time they finished a story they would say, 'The story has been told. If it was bad, it was my fault because I am the storyteller. And if it was good, it belongs to everybody.'
"It's a mistake and a kind of hubris if a film does well at the box office to dismiss it as clever marketing or something else," Miller said. "There's more happening there, and it's our obligation as storytellers to really try and understand it. To me, it's all cinema. I don't think you can ghettoize it and say, oh this is cinema or that is cinema. It applies to all the arts, to literature, the performing arts, painting and music, in all its form. It's such a broad spectrum, a wide range and to say that anyone is more significant or more important than the other, is missing the point. It's one big mosaic and each bit of work fits into it."