Walt Disney Pictures released a new trailer for A Wrinkle in Time, and if the film does indeed live up to the promise of the latest preview, the live-action adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s classic novel is going to be one truly trippy, reality-bending cinematic spectacle.
Directed by Academy Award nominee Ava DuVernay (Selma) from a script penned by Jennifer Lee (Frozen), A Wrinkle in Time follows a young girl who’s recruited by a trio of eccentric interdimensional travelers to rescue her father, an astrophysicist trapped on a far-off planet. She’s joined on her adventure by her genius younger brother and her high-school classmate, and the three set off on a fantastic quest that spans planets and alternate dimensions and tests with the foundations of reality as we know it.
The film features an all-star cast, with Oprah Winfrey (Selma) as Mrs. Which, Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line) as Mrs. Whatsit, and Mindy Kaling (The Mindy Project) as Mrs. Who, the novel’s iconic trio of astral entities. Young actress Storm Reid plays the story’s lead character, Meg Murry, with Levi Miller (Pan) in the role of her classmate, Calvin, and Deric McCabe as her younger brother, Charles Wallace. Additional cast members include Chris Pine (Star Trek Beyond) as Meg’s father, Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Beauty and The Beast) as Mrs. Murry, Zach Galifianakis (The Hangover) as The Happy Medium, Michael Peña (Ant-Man) as Red, and André Holland (Moonlight) as Principal Jenkins.
L’Engle’s celebrated novel was first published in 1962, and went on to sell more than 23 million copies worldwide in the years that followed. It was the winner of the prestigious Newbery Medal, Sequoyah Book Award, and Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, and has been translated into 35 languages. The book was previously adapted for a 2003 television movie that was not received well, with even L’Engle herself giving it a negative review.
A Wrinkle in Time was the first of five books featuring the Murry family in a series L’Engle dubbed the “Time Quintet.” A Wrinkle in Time was followed by A Wind in the Door in 1973, then A Swiftly Tilting Planet in 1978, Many Waters in 1986, and finally, An Acceptable Time in 1989.
DuVernay’s adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time is scheduled to hit theaters March 9, 2018.
