Kicking off the festivities for the live-action presentation this past Saturday at Disney's D23 event was director Ava DuVernay, who is in the midst of editing her huge adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's 1963 children's tale A Wrinkle In Time. She brought some of her cast (including Oprah Winfrey, who conducted an Oprah-style hand out of posters for the audience) and also showed the first teaser trailer for the movie. Find that below, and an image of the poster lower down in the story...
Wrinkle has Frozen's Jennifer Lee adapting the tale, the start of L'Engle's Time Quartet series of novels. The story follows the Murry family; especially teenager Meg (Storm Reid) and her genius 5-year-old brother Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe), and Meg's classmate Calvin O'Keefe (Levi Miller). Meg and Charles' scientist father (Chris Pine) has gone missing, but after a visit from a mysterious woman called Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon), they learn that their father's research may have been more successful than they guessed and that he may have travelled in space and time. The kids end up following his footsteps to a planet called Camazotz, ruled by a giant evil brain called The Black Thing. Along the way, they meet Mrs. Whatsit's fellow mystery women Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling) and Mrs. Which (Winfrey).
From the looks of the trailer, DuVernay has pulled off a massive, magical and complex tale, launching the characters into a weird world and a wider universe. Speaking exclusive to Empire after leaving the stage, DuVernay explained how she approached the adaptation. "It's a re-interpretation of the book, which was a banned book. Madeleine L'Engle's imagination was such that they said, 'ugh... too much, too radical.' So we really just stepped into that and said, we're going to reach into our own imaginations as well and try to move it into a new century. And Disney let us do it. It's different, but hopefully makes you feel the same."
And how was her learning curve, diving into such a complicated, effects-heavy movie? "It was fantastic. There are so many resources and so many talented people that I could say an idea and there was someone that could make it happen! I want to do it again!"
Winfrey also feels that despite the book being best known in the States, it will connect with audiences around the globe. "I think you're going to get wonderful, worldwide reactions, that's what we're hoping for," she told Empire. "Because Ava's re-envisioning of the story allows it to be expanded it to a world of people who might not have read the book, or might not have related to the characters. The level of diversity represented feels inclusive and feels like we are reflecting what the world looks like."
A Wrinkle In Time arrives in the UK on 23 March next year.