DuVernay to direct “A Wrinkle in Time” for Disney

The script for the Disney film will be written by Frozen screenwriter Jennifer Lee. For now, there’s plenty of time to revisit the A Wrinkle In Time book before the movie eventually hits theaters.

It’s a sad fact that Madeline L’Engle’s classic science fiction novel A Wrinkle in Time has never gotten a worthwhile on-screen adaptation. After a unusual visitor appears on her doorstep one “dark and stormy night”, Meg is swept up in a time-traveling adventure to save her scientist father – and the world – from a nightmarish evil in the sky. She’s also in talks to direct Intelligent Life, which will star Lupita Nyong’o and is about “a United Nations worker in a department created to represent mankind if there was ever contact with aliens, who falls for a mystery woman who turns out to be one”. The author sniffed that it “met expectations”, in that “I expected it to be bad, and it is”. She’s now shooting a TV series for Oprah Winfrey’s OWN, “Queen Sugar”, based on the novel by Natalie Baszile. The website notes the filmmaker was courted by Disney for six months. A Wrinkle in Time will be a big change of pace for her. Not only does it sound like a much pricier, more high-profile project, it’ll be her first time working in the fantasy genre.

The director is also in the running for the upcoming DreamWorks film, Intelligent Life.