In essence, passion projects are made for an audience of one, it’s up to the paying public to decide whether or not they’re willing to get on board with the director’s long-held vision. In the case of George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing, the numbers showed that they most definitely were not.
The fantasy epic may have been the filmmaker’s first feature since the critical and commercial behemoth that was Mad Max: Fury Road, but audiences simply weren’t interested in stumping up their hard-earned cash to check out a story he’d been developing on and off since the late 1990s.
On a budget of $60 million, the romantic drama lashed in the trappings of fantastical visuals and ancient mythology could only rustle up a global box office tally of under $19 million. Reviews may have been strong as evidenced by Rotten Tomatoes scores of 71 and 73 percent from critics and crowds, but Three Thousand Years of Longing died a death in theaters nonetheless.
However, the on-demand circuit has a way of reviving forgotten flops, and Miller’s decades-in-the-making caper has become the latest beneficiary. As per FlixPatrol, Three Thousand Years of Longing has emerged from the wilderness to stake out a spot on the iTunes global most-watched rankings, and it may yet endure and find the appreciation it missed out on the first time around.
The ever-reliable Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba are excellent as the scholar and mystical djinn who exchange three wishes for his freedom, but nobody cared enough to find that out for themselves when the film was playing on the big screen.