A WRINKLE IN TIME

Why director Ava Duvernay agreed to adapt 1960s sci-fi fantasy A Wrinkle In Time

Your first look at Oprah Winfrey as Which in Ava Duvernay’s fantasy. We just need Who, What, Why, Where and How to complete the set.

AN ADAPTATION OF a 1962 science-fantasy novel about an American teenager who has to travel through time and space to rescue her scientist father may not initially seem like the obvious choice for award-winning director of

Selma and 13th, Ava Duvernay. But there was one person who thought it was perfect for her. That person was Tendo Nagenda, Executive Vice President of Production at Walt Disney Studios.

“He championed me as the director of this film and brought the material my way,” she remembers. “He said, ‘Ava, imagine the world you can build.’ I thought, ‘What is he talking about?’ Then I read it.”

Duvernay herself has always enjoyed sci-fi and fantasy and speaks of its importance to marginalised people, while recognising its current and historical limitations in culture. “It allows them [the marginalised] to imagine a world that isn’t there, a world in the future,” she says. “Now, the problem with these books and stories is that so often marginalised people are not present. Women are not present. People of colour are not present.”

This is Duvernay’s world to create, though, and she’s here to do things differently. She’s assembled a high-profile, diverse cast including Storm Reid as lead Meg Murry and Oprah Winfrey, Mindy Kaling and Reese Witherspoon as the three celestial beings who help her in her journey (see panel, left). But ultimately for Duvernay, there is a universal story to be told: “It’s about the ties that bind,” she says. “It’s really quite beautiful.” Du Vernay’s beautiful world certainly will be something to see.