In 2014, Frozen screenwriter Jennifer Lee was announced to be adapting Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time for the big screen; she reportedly got the job based on her ideas on worldbuilding. Now, Disney has hired a director to bring Lee’s vision to life: Selma‘s Ava DuVernay! According to Deadline, DuVernay has signed on to the project after six months of negotiations.
Disney took a stab at adapting L’Engle’s twisty novel of tesseracts and time travel over a decade ago, but the 2004 TV movie thrilled neither readers nor L’Engle: “Oh yes, I expected it to be bad,” she told Newsweek at the time, “and it is.” Here’s hoping that, in an era where SFF is more palatable in film and television, and especially with Disney movies like Frozen tackling deeper themes, that DuVernay and Lee’s version lands better.
While DuVernay has not yet confirmed the news, she did retweet a classic L’Engle quote:
But if I knew everything, there would be no wonder, because what I believe in is far more than I know.
