A WRINKLE IN TIME will mark director Ava DuVernay’s first foray into big-budget filmmaking, but in terms of the movie’s ideas and themes it’s straight up a familiar alley. The story about a young girl traveling to different worlds has all the trimmings of a wonderful, innocent, Spielbergian tale wrapped up in a progressive story about where we are in society and where we need to go. It’s sort of a lot to take in, but DuVernay spoke about the project with EW in hopes of shedding light on the story and why she decided to take it on. All you need to know is that Oprah Winfrey is in it, and she looks fabuloooooooous.
DuVernay has made a name for herself in recent years directing such critically acclaimed movies as SELMA (which was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, and criminally little else) and the powerful justice reform documentary 13TH. WRINKLE is a far cry from those films, but the director found something far more complex in this child’s tale — which she wasn’t able to read as a child going to school in Compton, but discovered as an adult:
I saw so much beauty in it, but also so much meaning. She’s a very radical thinker and she embedded her sense of what society should and could be in this piece, and a lot of it I agree with. And through that, the story of this girl saving the world and being out there in the universe slaying the darkness, it also says a lot about slaying our own dragons.
DuVernay was swept away by Jennifer Lee’s (FROZEN) script, and immediately she began envisioning the movie in her head:
The first image [I had in my head] was to place a brown girl in that role of Meg, a girl traveling to different planets and encountering beings and situations that I’d never seen a girl of color in. All of those scenes struck my fancy, and then it was also something that [Disney VP of production] Tendo Nagenda said to me, which I’ll never forget. One of the things that really made me want to read it was when he said, “Ava, imagine what you would do with the worlds. Worlds! Planets no one’s ever seen or heard of,” he said. There aren’t any other black women who have been invited to imagine what other planets in the universe might look and feel like. I was interested in that and in a heroine that looked like the girls I grew up with.
EW also got some exclusive images from the movie, and DuVernay couldn’t speak more highly of her large cast. Take a look!
DuVernay and Storm Reid as Meg:
She’s got the sweetest, warmest heart, and all that I saw every day was just a further blossoming of the good that is Storm Reid. She’s appropriately named. She’s a force.
Chris Pine as Meg’s dad:
Chris is the first full-on heart-throb type of actor that I’ve ever worked with. That’s how the world sees him. But I always just saw a damn good actor. I saw Z for Zachariah and Hell or High Water, and I just knew I wanted him because I saw, that dude’s got chops.
Reese Witherspoon as Mrs. Whatsit, Mindy Kaling as Mrs. Who and Oprah Winfrey as Mrs. Which, the “three Doubtfires” who guide Meg on her quest to find her parents:
My whole process with this film was, what if? With these women, I wondered, could we make them women of different ages, body types, races? Could we bring in culture, bring in history in their costumes? And in the women themselves, could we just reflect a fuller breadth of femininity?
With DuVernay's direction I think WRINKLE has the potential to be so much more than a typical children's fantasy adventure. She has a tremendous visual style that compliments her incredible sensitivity and passion, and all of that could take this story to its furthest extent. The first teaser could be dropping soon with Comic-Con on the way, and though we shouldn't expect to see much I have a feeling WRINKLE could be a breakout hit of 2018. I mean, if all else fails Oprah will put the butts in the seats.
A WRINKLE IN TIME arrives March 9, 2018.