If you don’t know what the Mannequin Challenge is, you probably haven’t been on social media in weeks. You also haven’t been reading Maria’s social media roundups. We have the Mannequin Challenge to thank for a mini Destiny’s Child reunion, Adele in a Western, proving that gymnasts actually aren’t human and Black Beatles hitting number one spot on the charts. Now, we have the latest viral craze to thank for revealing the official release date for Ava Duvernay’s A Wrinkle in Time.


They won. As Ava mentioned in her tweet, that’s over 100 cast and crew members and they pulled it off flawlessly. I could watch these challenges all day so this would have been enough on its own but coupled with the release date reveal and the fact that this cast and crew is full of women and people of colour is what makes this so outstanding for me.

We know Ava doesn’t just preach diversity. She lives, breathes and creates it. She cast Storm Reid as the lead in the Disney adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s novel. The rest of the cast includes Oprah, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Chris Pine, Michael Pena, Andre Holland, Mindy Kaling and Zach Galifianakis just to name a few. We know that diversity will be representing in front of the camera and this Mannequin Challenge just gave us a peek at the representation behind it. I can’t f-cking wait for this movie. Spring 2018 is too far away.

On Monday, Lainey wrote about how Ava continues to agitate and fight through her work. Through her must-see documentary 13th, the message of exposing and challenging the f-cked prison system and the blatant, institutionalized racism behind mass incarceration is clear. A Wrinkle in Time is a sci-fi Disney movie about a pre-teen girl. It might not be as clear how this film agitates but as Sarah has noted repeatedly in the past week, we need an escape and fantasy films are going to be the hottest ticket at the box office. Ava’s work demonstrates that women are capable of creating great movies, contrary to the belief of many dumb men. She’s shown that your cast and crew can be as multicultural as real f-cking life and the sky won’t fall. With A Wrinkle in Time, Ava became the first black female director to helm a 100-million-dollar movie. I’ll leave you with a tweet that doesn’t involve a mannequin challenge but it does show Ava rocking a t-shirt that pretty much sums up why her work is always important.