“I need a mathematician that can look beyond the numbers—math that doesn’t exist—before the Russians plant a flag in the damn Moon,” Kevin Costner says in the first trailer for Hidden Figures—but this isn’t his story. Ted Melfi’s biopic tackles the untold story of Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe), the brilliant, gutsy African-American mathematicians who looked beyond those numbers to launch John Glenn into space in 1962. And now the first trailer has been released!
Punctuated by peppy music and snappy lines from the trio, Hidden Figures sets up their social obstacles—doubly so being female and black in the 1960s—with a number of Oscar-ready lines:
“We go from being our fathers’ daughters to our husbands’ wives to our babies’ mothers.”
“There’s no protocol for women attending.” “There’s no protocol for a man circling the Earth either, sir.”
“We all get there together or we don’t get there at all.”
Screenwriter Allison Schroeder recently discussed the importance of Katherine, Dorothy, and Mary supporting each other professionally and personally. Watch the upbeat and inspiring trailer:
Hidden Figures takes flight January 13, 2017.
