What do you think of Nyong’o and Ava DuVernay potentially teaming together? The director, who helmed the Martin Luther King biopic Selma, is also fielding an offer from Disney to adapt A Wrinkle in Time, the children book classic by Madelein L’Engle. Firstly, while writers Trevorrow and Connolly have always had a foot in the science fiction camp – with time-travelling gem Safety Not Guaranteed and excellent re-boot Jurassic World under their belts – they’ve never really dived in, head first, until now. It was originally titled The Ambassador. It was not well received, and L’Engle herself said it “met expectations”: “I expected it to be bad, and it is”, she said. The lead character falls in love with an enigmatic woman, due to be played by Nyong’o, only to discover that she is an alien. Lupita Nyong’o has been cast as the film’s central alien protagonist and producers Frank Marshall and Trevorrow have set production to begin this summer.
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Perhaps even more awesome, if only because of context, is that DuVernay is also being wooed to direct a script by Colin Treverrow called Intelligent Life, a sci-fi story about a United Nations worker in a department of people created to represent mankind should we ever meet aliens.
“Intelligent Life” was set up a year ago at DreamWorks.
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After her studio break-out Selma proved to be one of 2014’s best films, Ava DuVernay has been courted for a number of projects, but has yet to decide on one yet. While Nyong’o is fresh off a major role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, her motion-capture and CGI-only performance disappointed some fans, who hoped that the iconic series would give the Oscar-winning actress a more fitting part.
