None of this half-Disney Marvel sh*t, Ava DuVernay has decided that if she’s going work for a corporate machine, she’s going to work for Disney itself, the corporatiest, machiniest one of all. Yesterday Deadline reported that DuVernay will direct an adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time for Disney. It will be her feature film follow-up to Selma, and she’s also still in talks to direct a film co-written by Colin Trevorrow about a UN worker who falls in love with an alien. That movie is being produced by Steven Spielberg, and I hope that deal goes through, too, because I’m super into Ava DuVernay interrupting the Baseball Cap Boys’ Club of directors. She’s talked about Trevorrow benefitting from that system before, and now it seems like Trevorrow is trying to rectify the imbalance and see that DuVernay gets the same kind of consideration he did.
But first—probably—is A Wrinkle in Time. The script is from Frozen co-director Jennifer Lee, and it will undoubtedly be a big-budget blockbuster affair. DuVernay turned down the Black Panther gig at Marvel last year because she didn’t think she’d get to make her movie under Marvel’s command, but Disney is just as much a corporate overlord as Marvel is, so I’d be curious to know where her line is regarding creative control. Like what’s actually different about working for Disney? Or is it because she turned down that Marvel gig that Disney was willing to concede ground to her? She’s proven she’ll walk away if you don’t play her game, so Disney played her game, because she’s a f*cking BOSS.
