Oprah Winfrey and Co. Travel the Cosmos in ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ Trailer

By Sameer Rao Jul 17, 2017

"13th" and "Selma" director Ava DuVernay made history last August when she became the first Black woman to direct a film with a $100 million+ budget. On Saturday (July 15), she gave the world a first look at that film, the Disney-distributed adaptation of children’s fantasy novel "A Wrinkle in Time," via the above trailer.



DuVernay and Disney preceded the trailer with the release of never-before-seen production photos to Entertainment Weekly last Wednesday (July 12). The director published those pictures on Instagram the same day:

rn


DuVernay mentions in the post above that she envisioned the film’s protagonist Meg as a brown girl, and both the trailer and photos introduce 14-year-old Storm Reid ("12 Years a Slave") as that character.


"A Wrinkle in Time" is based on Madeline L’Engle’s 1963 novel of the same name. It follows Meg as she, her younger brother Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe, "Stephanie") and classmate Calvin O’Keefe (Levi Miller, "Pan") travel through irregularities in space and time to find Meg’s missing scientist father, Dr. Alex Murray (Chris Pine, "Wonder Woman"). The characters enter "tesseracts," or wrinkles in time, with the assistance of otherworldly beings Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"), Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling, "The Mindy Project") and Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon, "Big Little Lies").


DuVernay directed the film from screenwriter Jennifer Lee‘s ("Frozen") adaptation of L’Engle’s novel. It also stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw ("Beauty and the Beast"), Michael Peña ("Collateral Beauty") and André Holland ("Moonlight") in supporting roles.


"A Wrinkle in Time" hits theaters in March of next year. The Oscar– and Emmy-nominated DuVernay also has two forthcoming projects with Netflix: a narrative miniseries about the Central Park Five, and a buddy film with Rihanna ("Bates Motel") and Lupita Nyong’o ("Queen of Katwe") that grew out of an informal social media campaign.