A Wrinkle in Time is an awesome book… I think. I know I read it twice when I was younger, and I know I loved it, but if you asked me about it all I could tell you is that there’s a scene where the three “three chimerical celestial beings” accidentally flatten the main character, Meg, by taking her into two dimensions. And actually that might have been from one of the other books in the series.
That’s to say that this first look at the new film from Disney based off the books and directed by Ava DuVernay isn’t really stirring any sentimental feeling in me. It looks… like a thing. Newcomer Storm Reid should be interesting to watch as this is her first major film, and Mindy Kaling, Reese Witherspoon, and Oprah Winfrey (as Ms. Who, Ms. Whatsit, and Ms. Which, respectively) look like themselves in fancy makeup. There’s just not much here to get a feeling of what DuVernay’s vision for the incredibly large universe is. I may not remember much, but I do remember A Wrinkle in Time to be one of the most creative and engaging worlds I’d read about at the time.
It seems DuVernay is on the same page, even though science fiction is a far cry from her normal dramas. She said, “…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.”
Sounds like this could come out very unique.
[Via EW]
