It’s been four years since George Miller released his last movie, A.V. Club certified film-of-the-decade Mad Max: Fury Road. But while Miller has taken pains over the years to assure panicking hordes who have allowed themselves to become addicted to his high-octane brand of storytelling that, yes, another Mad Max movie is definitely in the works, he’s also made it clear that—as a 76-year-old auteur whose filmography also includes such allegedly off-topic entries as the Happy Feet films and the utterly bizarre Babe: Pig In The City—he doesn’t feel especially beholden to letting the market dictate which movie he’ll actually make next.
Hence the recent news that Miller’s next project will be neither shiny nor chrome, with the director instead focusing on a mysterious Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton-starring project titled Three Thousand Years Of Longing. And while he’s not giving up any plot details about that new film, he did go so far as to taunt us all by dubbing it “the anti-Mad Max.” Or, to report his own words more fully: “One thing I can tell you; it’s not [another Fury Road]. It’s a movie that is very strongly visual, but it’s almost the opposite of Fury Road. It’s almost all interior and there’s a lot of conversation in it. There are action scenes, but they are by the by.”
This is all part of a much longer Deadline piece, in which Miller also talked about how he selects which stories to tell, his delight at people teasing out the subtext lightly buried in his allegorical car chase spectacular, and, (sigh(, what he thinks about the “Are superhero movies cinema?” “debate.” (Short answer: Yes, absolutely, don’t be a jerk.)
More importantly: He also revealed the tragic backstory of Fury Road’s OSHA-agnostic guitar master, the Doof Warrior, and dropped a few little hints about what Three Thousand Years Of Longing might actually be about. (At the very least, he described the title as “a riddle,” which is intriguing all on its own.) You can read the full profile here; just don’t expect a lightning-fast thrillride that’ll keep you permanently glued to the edge of your seat (or strapped to the front of your car, as the case may be). And don’t worry: Another Mad Max movie is definitely on the way. “I’m not done with the Mad Max story and I think you have to be a multi-tasker, and there’s certainly another Mad Max coming down the pike after this,” Miller said. “We’re in preparation on that as well.”