A Wrinkle in Time or Intelligent Life? A wrinkle that’s welcome.

There was a television series in 2003 but Disney has new plans to turn Madeleine L’Engle’s classic, 1963 Newberry Medal-winning fantasy novel, A Wrinkle in Time into a feature film. Good news for women in film, Selma director Ava DuVernay has been offered the job of helming the project, based on a script by the Oscar winning writer of Frozen, Jennifer Lee. 

But there’s a wrinkle! Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment also wants DuVernay for a sci-fi thriller titled Intelligent Life. Rumor has it Intelligent Life might star Lupita Nyongo. According to IndieWire, ‘the story is about a UN worker in a department designed to represent mankind if there was ever contact with aliens, who falls for a mystery woman who turns out to be an alien.’ 

A plethora of choice? For a female director? It’s almost as if that big bright klieg light turned on the face of Hollywood with its gender inequities is starting to make a difference. And for DuVernay, an unexpected wrinkle—what project to pick? That’s got to be the kind of wrinkle DuVernay welcomes. I wonder which one she’ll choose?