Ava DuVernay drops out as director of Lupita Nyong’o’s Intelligent Life

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Ava DuVernay was attached earlier this year to take the helm of INTELLIGENT LIFE, a sci-fi thriller starring Lupita Nyong'o which which centers on a United Nation employee that monitors outer space who makes contact with a beautiful woman, who may be an alien. Unfortunately, per THR, it seems that the studio will soon be searching for another director as they've reported that Ava DuVernay has dropped out of the project.

It's not the dreaded "creative differences" this time thankfully, but instead DuVernay cites scheduling conflicts as her reason for leaving. JURASSIC WORLD director Colin Trevorrow and his collaborator Derek Connolly wrote the script for the upcoming film, and at one point Trevorrow was even set to direct the project himself, but he soon found himself busy with other projects and had to pull out the directors chair for someone else. Lupita Nyong'o is still attached to star in the film, which was looking to kick off production this summer. If Dreamworks is still hoping to get started on the film, I'd imagine we'll be hearing about DuVernay's replacement before too long.

Ava DuVernay is also attached to direct A WRINKLE IN TIME for Disney, an adaptation of the classic Madeleine L’Engle fantasy novel which "revolves around a young girl whose father, a government scientist, has gone missing after working on a mysterious project called a tesseract, which involves being transported to a fifth dimension with mysterious inhabited planets." She also has a television series on the way titled Queen Sugar which stars Rutina Wesley (True Blood).