EXCLUSIVE: Selma director Ava DuVernay has just been set by Disney to direct A Wrinkle In Time, an adaptation of the 1963 Newbery Medal-winning Madeleine L’Engle fantasy classic novel that has a script by Oscar-winning Frozen writer and co-director Jennifer Lee. Deadline revealed February 8 that DuVernay had been offered this film and was also in the mix at DreamWorks for Intelligent Life, a sci-fi thriller scripted by Colin Trevorrow and his Jurassic World collaborator Derek Connolly. DuVernay now has the offer on that film and is in negotiations on a pic that has 12 Years A Slave Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o attached to a fable about a UN worker in a department designed to represent mankind if there was ever contact with aliens, who falls for a mystery woman who turns out to be one. That film is produced by Frank Marshall, Trevorrow and Big Beach principals Peter Saraf and Marc Turtletaub.
It is unclear which film will go first, but A Wrinkle in Time was first to close and it is the culmination of six months of courtship by Disney Motion Pictures president Sean Bailey and exec Tendo Nagenda. A Wrinkle In Time involves a young girl whose government scientist father 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 takes part in a search for her father and sees some incredible creatures along the way.
Both films mark a big step up in scale for DuVernay, a former publicist who proved her mettle by making Selma — a period picture about the historic civil rights march led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr — for $20 million. It won an Oscar and drew much acclaim. Selma in turn was a big step up from The Middle Of Nowhere, a $200,000 budget feature that won her the Grand Jury Prize and Best Dramatic Director awards at Sundance 2012, and the John Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirits Awards. She is repped by CAA and attorney Nina Shaw.
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You had me at Ava DuVernay and “A Wrinkle in Time.” You lost me at Disney.
I wish she’d focus on real people and stories that matter. Hard to get those movies made. Anyone for hire can step into this studio genre stuff.
Are you somehow implying that fictional works do not matter?
I’ve got nothing against studio genre stuff. I like a lot of it. I just don’t trust Disney with this source material.
Wrinkl in Time is a GREAT book.
A woman of color gets to play on the same field as all the other men who do this “studio genre stuff” which is the bread and butter of Hollywood. It’s a damned fine thing to see her get a piece of the action.
Disney distributed, but had no creative input into, the 2003 TV movie adaptation which boasts a good performance by Alfre Woodard and absolutely nothing else.
@Ray : I had no idea.
Going to imdb and youtbe to check it out.
And that an AfrAm lady was cast: alfre woodard– that surprises me since disney keeps making all these anglo anglo anglo live action anglo princess movies
Good for her
I wasn’t a Selma fan- it was a lifetime tv movie at best .maybe she can win me over with these
Exactly. This news depresses me to no end.
lifetime movie? NONSENSE.
And I was hoping this project would have vision….
Hey man, I just think it’s great that an African American woman of color got an actual studio movie to direct. Who cares what it’s about. All studio movies suck anyway. The point is that she got the gig. Diversity rules. And I think it’s great that Disney doesn’t think the only thing she can direct is a movie about race relations. Right on sister!
Everything she makes involves some aspect of racism. I honestly believe she thinks its her current role in life to “raise awareness” of racism to one and all. This move will probably be no different.
I’m with you Max! Lol The game continues…
The people who love movies actually care what it’s about. If she actually did get the job because of diversity then that’s stupid. People should get the job because of their creative vision for the movie (which might be the reason she got the gig.)
“People” which conveniently are always some straight white guy.
and this is the problem. When a black person finally gets a chance to show their stuff, others accuse them of only being chosen for the sake of diversity, never mind their talents.
You people make me SICK
for future reference, ‘african american woman of color’ isn’t a word you should be using. it’s either she’s african-american or she’s a woman of color. Better yet, call her black. But it sounds redundant and odd when you say ‘african american woman of color’.
Better still, judge the film, not the director’s colour or sex. How many cinemagoers really care whether the director is male, female, black, white or Martian? At the end of the day a film stands or falls on the worldwide gate and take-to-cost ratio.
Precisely. Her movies have been pretty boring so far. So it does make you wonder why she was chosen. But she could definitely surprise us all.
@deep african american woman of colour is used because ‘color’ does not solely mean the afro diaspora. It means all minority ethnicities. So east asians( chinese japanses koreans, vietnamese bhutan malaysians] and south asians[ india bangladesh pakistan nepali] ans hispanics/latinos/chicanos/ are all aslso people of colour.
The reason people think she only makes movies about race relations or racism, to be more to the point, it its because that’s all she has ever done. I read one store that said she was considered but dropped from doing a Marvel movie because she wanted to introduce a racism theme in it. True or not true I do not know. In any case its not a subject most white viewers are all that interested about. Know what that means? Check out the over all grosses on 12 Years a Slave, or Selma.
She’s gonna have a lot of pressure on her here. Because if this film sucks, it’s gonna set the diversity crowd back quite a bit. Whether she was chosen because of her pitch, which is totally possible, or because of a knee jerk reaction to the Oscar diversity “controversy” which is also possible, it will be perceived by everyone as a test of meritocracy vs perceived racism. It’s gonna be interesting.
Wish I could end this comment with the Colbert eating popcorn meme.
@Largo did you read the article linked? please do
http://deadline.com/2016/02/ava-duvernay-a-wrinkle-in-time-intelligent-life-philippe-dauman-donna-langley-focus-features-spotlight-vatican-1201698306/
ava has been courted for year and half by Tendo Nagenda so this choice is not a result of the recent oscars so white controversy. ava has been getting acclaim since she wont the 2012 sundance jury prize for ‘middle of nowhere’.
Yes. But I think Middle of Nowhere is boring and she’s proven herself to be pretty racist with all the Selma nonsense last year. So it simply isn’t possible to remove that from the equation because of her non-stop complaining over race. She has gotten acclaim but her work has been, in myopinion, pretty lame. So I wonder if the acclaim would be the same if she was a white male director making the exact same film.
REPLY TO LARGO :
If Ava were whte and male yes she would get acclaim bc that is who owns and runs hollywood. You get a pat on the back just for showing up.
Eastwood, Scorsese have made sh tty films but keep getting hired and funding.
And the sexual deviants Allen and rapist Polanski have people clamoring to work with them for Polasnki flying everywhere he wont get extradited…a shame!
Largo: so bc to YOU “MON” was boring she should never work again ?
Ava has not proven herself racist.
She presented truth about LBJ.
Of course his descendants and presidential library objected bc they want him seen in the best light possible. I implore you to do the research, LBJ did not like Dr King and the Civil Rights Movement.
Go Ava. Go Tendo. Go Sean.
she made one film that looked more straight to VOD but hey at least it’s P.C.
White guy directs a “straight to VOD” or indie-type film that gets him a lot of notice or buzz. Next thing you know, he is assigned to a big studio film. I’ve lost track of how many times that has happened. That’s merit when its a white guy, but P.C. when it’s someone like Ava?
man….this is beautiful, she’s going to do the story great justice. it was always one of my favorite books. I still wish she had accepted Black Panther. She wouldve paid attention to the historical aspect of the story, and appreciated it much more than in the hands of a regular director.
Wrinkle in Time could be a fabulous movie. The commentary on communism/totalitarianism is even more profound now than it was in Cold War 1963. I hope Ms. DuVernay has the huge vision (and budget) she’ll need to give life to the book.