MAGICAL ‘TIME’
Winfrey embraces message of hope in Disney’s ‘Wrinkle’
LOS ANGELES — Naturally, Oprah Winfrey took center stage at Disney’s “A Wrinkle in Time” press conference. The Mouse House had lassoed no less than a dozen participants to tout the $100 million big-screen adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s children’s novel.
Yet it was Winfrey who steered this ship to mark a reunion with her “Selma” director, Ava DuVernay.
In “Wrinkle,” Winfrey is a magical Mrs. Which, who, with fellow spirits Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon) and Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling), assists a young girl (Storm Reid) in an intergalactic quest to find her missing father (Chris Pine).
What was different between the 2014 civil rights drama “Selma” and “Wrinkle”?
“Disney money,” Winfrey, 64, answered, getting a laugh.
“Selma,” she said, was low low-budget. “We’re like, ‘How much money do I have? Let me try to help you out.’
“On that film literally we had one day to shoot everybody coming across the bridge in Selma. You got to get it before it rains. And if it rains, you’re not gonna get it. And you don’t have enough money to try it again.
“Here you got the Disney machine. That’s why this is so exciting, that Ava DuVernay is at the helm of that.
“It makes me well inside. Fills my heart. Every time I think about Ava and her dreads and all of these men running around, taking direction from her.
“To see her be the master of that was powerful and inspiring. So, big difference. Big difference.”
In “Wrinkle,” Mrs. Which speaks to the need to restore hope. It’s a sentiment Winfrey strongly endorses.
“The darkness is there to help bring out the light in all of us. If we turned all the lights off in this room and just one person held a candle, you would start to dissipate the darkness. You would banish the darkness.
“Look at how much darkness it would take to actually engulf all the light that every candle would hold in this room. So it just takes a little bit of light — that’s what we’re hoping for. A little bit of light.
“And if everybody can get that message, that’s how we have hope in the world. We’re looking for warriors who can bring hope back.” (“A Wrinkle in Time” opens Friday.)