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 Directed by Ava DuVernay, the Disney movie transforms author
Madeleine L'Engle's 1962 tale of science fiction, adolescent
angst and imagination into a vision of black female empowerment.
The film, opening in U.S. theaters on Friday, also marks the
first time a woman of color has directed a Hollywood action
movie with a budget bigger than $100 million, and with such a
multi-racial cast.
Oprah Winfrey, Mindy Kaling and Reese Witherspoon play the three
supernatural beings who help guide Meg Murry, a 13-year-old who
loves physics, in a search for her missing father that involves
saving the universe from impending evil.
"Look at what is at the center of this story. This beautiful
young girl, who is a person of color, who goes on this
incredible adventure to discover her father and then discovers
the best of herself in the process," said Winfrey, who plays the
supernatural Mrs Which.
DuVernay cast bi-racial actress Storm Reid as teenager Meg and
populated the film with actors of multiple ethnicities.
"Shouldn't everyone have a seat at the table? That's all we are
saying here," said DuVernay
"Mindy's south-east Asian, Deric McCabe - a little
Filipino-American boy. African-American, biracial, black,
Caucasian, let everyone be there, Latino. It's about time," she
said.
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"Black Panther," also from Disney, won rave reviews, has taken $921
million at the global box office in three weeks, and upended the
Hollywood notion that films by and about black people don't make
money.
"It's wonderful that we're reflecting the world that we're living in
today, and in the wake of 'Black Panther', I feel like we could be
the spiritual sister," said British actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who
plays Meg's mother in "A Wrinkle in Time."
Early reviews for "A Wrinkle in Time" have been mixed, and the movie
is expected to bring in about $40 million on its opening weekend in
North America, box-office analysts say. "Black Panther" took more
than $190 million on its opening weekend.
Movie critics praised the visual imagination of "A Wrinkle in Time"
and its messages of diversity and empowerment. But Variety said the
film was "wildly uneven, weirdly suspenseless, and totally all over
the place," while the Los Angeles Times liked the "sheer exuberance"
of the movie but wished it was "more focused, more disciplined."
(Reporting by Jill Serjeant and Reuters Television; Editing by
Sandra Maler)
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