Idris Elba & Tilda Swinton Star In 'Three Thousand Years of Longing'

Some fairy tales never go out of style; the same story is merely retold in modern settings. These parables usually reflect a moral code that's stood the test of civilizations — Beauty and the Beast's admonishment to look beyond the surface of a person's appearance, Cinderella's proof that being a good person will lead to happiness. The Genie of the Lamp is another one, the "be careful what you wish for" story of lives ruined because of heedless desire fulfillment. The new film, Three Thousand Years of Longing, is the latest adaptation of that Middle Eastern tale and is heading to U.S. theaters after its debut at Cannes.

Three Thousand Years of Longing is based on a modernized version of the famous story from 1001 Arabian Nights, the titular novella from the 1995 short story collection The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye by A.S.Byatt. Byatt, the pen name of Dame Antonia Susan Duffy, one of the greatest modern English writers of our time, her Possession: A Romance won the 1990 Booker Prize, and The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye helped secure her DBE for services to literature. The novella is both a fairy tale trope and a deconstruction of the mythological and moral underpinnings of the story, with some Shakespeare and Chaucer tossed in for good measure.

As retold, it features a genius literary scholar who accidentally comes across a dusty bottle in an Istanbul bazaar, discovering a genie inside hellbent on granting her three wishes. Gillian Perholt is a middle-aged  narratologist — someone who studies the narrative structure of literature — and her deep understanding of these myths and her conversations with the genie suggest can work together to sidestep the usual pitfalls of wish-granting. But though Perholt believes she has outsmarted her own fairy tale's natural ending, it is not as easy as she thought.  

The film's synopsis is as follows:

A scholar, content with life, encounters a Djinn who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom. Their conversation, in a hotel room in Istanbul, leads to consequences neither would have expected.

The adaptation stars Tilda Swinton (The Grand Budapest Hotel) as the narratologist, here renamed Alithea Binnie, and Idris Elba (Luther) as the Djinn. Aamito Lagum co-stars as Queen of Sheba, with Matteo Bocelli as Prince Mustafa. The rest of the cast includes Burcu Gölgedar, Kaan Guldur, Jack Braddy, Hugo Vella, Pia Thunderbolt, Anna Adams, David Collins, Angie Tricker, and Alyla Browne. George Miller, best known for the Mad Max series, adapted, directed, and executive produced.

Three Thousand Years of Longing is set to be released exclusively in theaters in the United States on Aug. 31, 2022.