TIME’S TRAILBLAZER
Selma director Ava DuVernay will be the first woman of colour to make a $100M-budget live-action movie,
There have been 335 films made for a budget of $100 million (U.S.) or more since James Cameron created that blockbuster distinction with the action film True Lies in 1994.
The 335 number might actually seem low, given how many superhero movies arrive at the multiplex on an almost weekly basis.
But more significant is the No. 1 that’s now associated with it: Selma’s Ava DuVernay is about to become the first director who is a woman of colour to join the $100-million production club for a live-action film. (Jennifer Yuh Nelson had previously notched that achievement with the animated Kung Fu Panda 2 and Kung Fu Panda 3.)
DuVernay’s success may also be further indication that the conscience-stirring #OscarsSoWhite protest and related causes are reaping results.
The news broke last week, via Melissa Silverstein’s Women and Hollywood blog, that DuVernay’s next film, Disney’s adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s popular children’s book A Wrinkle in Time, hits the magic dollar mark. (The budget for the film, set for a 2017 release and starring Oprah Winfrey, is actually expected to be at least $103 million.)
DuVernay tweeted her thanks for a torrent of ensuing kudos, humbly noting that she’s “not the first capable of doing so. Not by a long shot. Thanks to @DisneyStudios for breaking this glass with me.”
It’s not the first glass ceiling she’s broken. DuVernay was the first woman of colour to win the best director prize at Sundance, which she won in 2012 for her second theatrical feature, the drama Middle of Nowhere. She’s also the first black woman to be nominated for best director at the Golden Globes and to have a movie nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, both for Selma, her 2014 Martin Luther King biopic.
But the Oscar glory was muted by the fact that DuVernay wasn’t nominated for Best Director and lead actor David Oyelowo wasn’t nominated for Best Actor for the same film, bizarre omissions for this critically acclaimed work.
DuVernay knew going in that it would be hard to land an Oscar nod: “It’s like a unicorn,” she told the Star about Oscar recognition. “I hear it’s out there, but I’ve never seen one.”
The Selma snub prompted the creation of the #OscarsSoWhite online protest, which boiled over earlier this year when the set of 2016 Oscar nom- inations was a sea of white faces. The Academy responded by promising to redress the grievances by increasing the number of women and non-white Oscar voters, a group historically dominated by white men.
Changing times may mean that DuVernay finally sees her “unicorn,” since A Wrinkle in Time would be eligible for honours at the 2018 Oscars — and her new studio, Disney, is highly skilled at wooing voters.
But Silverstein, from Women and Hollywood, is “not very optimistic” that DuVernay’s breakthrough rep- resents a lasting achievement. After all, just two other women are in the $100-million-production club for live-action films: Kathryn Bigelow for K-19: The Widowmaker in 2002 and Patti Jenkins for the in-theworks Wonder Woman, due in 2017.
“I think Ava got this movie because she is a very special person,” Silverstein said via email. “She has true vision and passion and I have no doubt that she went in there overly prepared and just hit it out of the park.”
DuVernay landed the Wrinkle gig more on merit than on any connection with #OscarsSoWhite or other protests, Silverstein added.
“I don’t think that #OscarsSoWhite hurt her case, but honestly, if the powers that be in Hollywood wanted to do something about racial and gender diversity they could have done it a long time ago.
“There needs to be systemic change in the industry and every glass ceiling that is shattered is fantastic, but we can’t stop at one person, we need many women to be given the opportunities the men have.”