A critically acclaimed director and outspoken advocate for diversity in Hollywood, Ava DuVernay is on the industry’s hot list for upcoming projects. She has been hired to helm Disney’s upcoming adaption of A Wrinkle In Time.
According to Deadline Hollywood, “The 1963 Newbery Medal-winning Madeleine L’Engle fantasy classic novel … has a script by Oscar-winning Frozen writer and co-director Jennifer Lee.”
News broke earlier this month that DuVernay had been offered this film, but Disney made it official today.
DuVernay is currently working on an impressive slate of other projects. Between her new distribution company ARRAY and her OWN series, “Queen Sugar,” DuVernay is using her platform to create diverse casts and provide diverse films an outlet they otherwise would not have.
The director is also in the running for the upcoming DreamWorks film, Intelligent Life. This sci-fi thriller was written by Star Wars Episode IX director Colin Trevorrow and his Jurassic World collaborator Derek Connolly.
DuVernay reportedly has the offer on that film and wants to bring 12 Years A Slave Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o into the project, according to Deadline. The film is about a U.N. worker in a department designed to represent mankind if there was ever contact with aliens. The U.N worker falls for a mysterious woman who turns out to be one of the aliens he is supposedly guarding the earth from.
DuVernay’s stock continues to rise in Hollywood, and her recent hires may be a sign that the industry is changing.
