George Miller to Ride Shiny and Chrome Into Cannes as Jury President

It turns out that in Hollywood, all you need to do to command the respect of your elite group of peers is direct a new project every five or six years. It doesn’t even matter if your filmography is marred with stretches of talking-animal-based missteps, so long as your name is George Miller, and the movies you sporadically make are as spectacularly good as the Mad Max films. In the past year, Fury Road has singlehandedly shored up Miller’s reputation as a master filmmaker, with a pending Best Director Academy Award nomination now in the mix. But last night, Miller was granted an honor even more prestigious.

Deadline notes that the Cannes Film Festival jury announced that Miller would sit in as the President for the 2016 festivities, a distinction shared by such titans of world cinema as Wong Kar-wai, David Cronenberg, Francis Ford Coppola, and even Fritz Lang. Though the other members of his jury have yet to be announced, they will collectively be responsible for awarding the coveted Palme d’Or to the festival’s finest film at the closing ceremony. Miller, whose own Fury Road screened Out of Competition at the 2015 festival, was elated to hear of his appointment:

“What an unmitigated delight! To be there in the middle of this storied festival at the unveiling of cinematic treasures from all over the planet,” Miller said in a statement released as part of the announcement. “To spend time in passionate discourse with fellow members of the jury. Such an honor. I’ll be there with bells on!”

With bells on! What a fun guy, this George Miller. We’ve still got plenty of waiting to do, both for the remainder of the Jury as well as the actual entries that will screen In Competition, but for now, we can enjoy this lovely day.