As Disney’s D23 expo wraps up for another year, and San Diego Comic Con already imminent, the studio’s rich slate of upcoming features was revealed to a hungry audience. The usual suspects were there - no fewer than six entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the latest Pixar animations (including Coco and a sequel to The Incredibles), more Star Wars movies, and the next batch of live-action remakes of beloved classics, with The Lion King standing out as a fan favorite.
All in all, the release schedule of 21 films from now until the end of 2019 was heavily defined by its familiarity. The vast majority of projects are sequels or remakes. Amidst this full slate, there were two films that stood out for their relative freshness: The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, an adaptation of the classic ballet, and A Wrinkle in Time. While the reception for the news on the former was pleasant, if somewhat muted, the reactions for the first sneak peak at Ava DuVerney's adaptation of the Newbery Medal winning classic children's novel were rapturous. After the premiere of the trailer, social media responses were highly positive, and as of the writing of this piece, the trailer on Disney's official YouTube page has been viewed over 2.8million times. Some critics seem surprised by the enthusiasm for the film, but it is that excitement that could help change the game at Disney.
In many ways, A Wrinkle in Time has already changed the game in the Hollywood based film industry. It’s the first film with a budget of over $100m to be directed by a woman of color (and the third by any woman director, after Kathryn Bigelow’s K-19: The Widowmaker and Patty Jenkins’s Wonder Woman). Ava DuVernay, director of the Oscar nominated films Selma and 13th, had originally met with Disney for talks to direct Marvel’s Black Panther, but pulled out over questions of creative control. Her remaining with Disney to helm a project such as A Wrinkle in Time suggests she negotiated well to maintain that power over the end film. The story, centred on a young girl named Meg Murry who is forced to travel to strange planets to save her scientist father, is a fascinating genre mishmash of science-fiction, fantasy, and coming-of-age drama, which would prove tough for any director to adapt (a made-for-TV movie was released in 2003, but was negatively received and author Madeleine L’Engle reportedly hated it).
On top of that, various characters in the story have undergone a race change, including Meg (Storm Reid) and her mother (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), as well as two of the supernatural beings, Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling), and Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey). Before any of us had even seen a second of footage, DuVernay was already opening doors at Disney. While the studio has made progress in terms of the gender and racial makeup of its directors, the vast majority are still white men, with DuVernay accounting for one of only three women alongside Niki Caro, who will direct Mulan, and Anna Boden, one of the directors of Captain Marvel.
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That may seem unimportant to some, but it is worth noting how rare these instances are. The fact that DuVernay, a multi-award winning director of film, TV, and documentaries is the first woman of color ever to get this kind of budget. It's not as if there aren't enough opportunities to go around. It’s a disheartening reality of the industry that hiring women to direct with big budgets is only recently something that's seen as a smart decision. Seeing DuVernay at D23, giddy with anticipation to show the crowd her trailer and happy to call the audiences at Disney “my people," was a reminder of how rare such sights are.
This game changing moment was made all the more potent by the presence of Storm Reid next to DuVernay. The role of Meg was not written as a black girl, but seeing her in the trailer as one of children’s literature’s most beloved protagonists was a bright moment that highlighted the sheer lack of young black girls audiences see in pop culture, particularly projects of this size and scope. In DuVernay's own words, she’s brought together “a cast that looks like the real world.”
Diversity isn’t just about doing the right thing and making pop culture more representative of our world: It’s good for business. It befits Disney to appeal to as many people as possible, and audiences are less receptive to the oft-refuted justification that straight white men are a sort of default mode everyone can relate to while female characters will only ever be appealing to female audiences. If the recent meteoric box office grosses of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Rogue One, and Wonder Woman over at Warner Bros. prove nothing else, it’s that diversity sells.
Creatively, the film could also offer Disney a new storytelling boon. A Wrinkle in Time is a classic novel but not one that has yielded countless adaptations like The Chronicles of Narnia, a series it’s often compared to. It's a recognizable property with untapped potential to grow into its own franchise, offering Disney more in the ways of brand expansion and audience growth.
Not only that, but it's a foothold into material previously unconnected to their own properties. The current live-action Disney model seems to be simply remaking their most beloved films, which has reaped incredible profits but offered little in the way of creativity. The Jungle Book is a visual feast and Beauty and the Beast has its moments, but both are hampered by their slavish dedication to the original material, including remaking some scenes beat-for-beat. It certainly pays to pander to nostalgia, but it’s a formula that can only go on for so long before even the most dedicated audiences grow tired.
A Wrinkle in Time can help buck this growing trend by offering something viewers haven’t seen before: a vibrant, epic sci-fi fantasy story for families based on a novel loved by children for decades. If this proves successful, it could open Disney’s creative heads up to the possibility of taking on other children’s classics or investing in completely original live-action stories. That’s something Disney has been wary of recently, thanks to under performing projects like Tomorrowland and John Carter, but the right success could set off a whole new business model.
Madeleine L'Engle wrote several sequels to the novel, some of which follow Meg's own daughter, so the potential for a franchise is obvious, but even if A Wrinkle in Time succeeds as a standalone film, the investment will be great for Disney. Its ever-growing roster of remakes, sequels and major franchises won't go bust any time soon, but Walt Disney prided his studio on experimenting with the unique and untested, and Ava DuVernay's work here could signal the company's most daring leap into the great unknown.
