Well, here’s a trailer to grab your attention. The official trailer has been released for Three Thousand Years of Longing, a dark fantasy dramedy from filmmaker George Miller (Mad Max: Fury Road, Happy Feet, Mad Max).

An adaptation of the short story “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” by A. S. Byatt, Three Thousand Years of Longing has Tilda Swinton playing Dr Alithea Binnie, a woman content with life and with a skeptic outlook on the world. She’s in for quite the shakeup when she encounters a Djinn (Idris Elba), who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom. As a scholar of narrative, she’s well aware of the many cautionary tales out there about wishes gone wrong. He pleads his case by telling her fantastical stories of his past.

It appears that Miller has made a proudly wild, bizarre, visually impressive-looking film here. The filmmaker reunites with Oscar-winning Fury Road cinematographer John Seale (The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley) and Babe: Pig in the City production designer Roger Ford (Rabbit-Proof Fence, The Chronicles of Narnia) for a film that is certainly picturesque – and with more promise provided with two fantastic performers in the lead. The film had its premiere a few days ago at the Cannes Film Festival, where first reviews have been somewhat mixed (a 67% on Rotten Tomatoes, for example, at the time of writing); some criticism is directed at the film’s lack of narrative impact and some praise is directed at Miller’s creative gusto on the technical side of things.

Either way, this looks like quite the ride. We’ll see what we’re in for when Three Thousand Years of Longing opens in U.S. cinemas on August 31st and Australian cinemas on September 1st.