While women are still largely underrepresented in Hollywood, one film is already proving to be ahead of its curve: A Wrinkle in Time. Ava DuVernay was going to helm Black Panther and passed, was going to helm the Colin Trevorrow-penned Intelligent Life and passed, but now she’s behind the camera on the adaptation of the beloved Madeleine L’Engle book. As casting continues after the addition of Oprah Winfrey, two more talented women are in talks to join the ranks: Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling.

THR was first to report their negotiations, which would hopefully lead to Witherspoon as Mrs. Whatsit and Kaling as Mrs. Who. In the book, a young girl named Meg Murry who goes on an interplanetary journey with her brother Charles and her their friend Calvin to find her missing father, who was said to have vanished after experimenting with time travel. Helping them on their trip mission are a trio of celestial beings: Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which. Oprah is already on board to play Mrs. Which, and it looks we now have the other two.

DuVernay directed her first feature in 2010 called I Will Follow, but she didn’t have her mainstream breakthrough moment until 2014’s Selma, a dramatization of Martin Luther King Jr.’s march through Selma, Alabama. She then made headlines for becoming the first African American woman to helm a $100 million film that is A Wrinkle In Time, and she’s doing so with a script by another talented woman: Frozen writer and co-director Jennifer Lee.


Witherspoon, too, has been a champion for women in Hollywood, having started her own production company Pacific Standard with Bruna Papandrea in 2012. “We care about finding new writers and new voices and helping support new female voices in film,” she had said.

Disney is planning to start production on A Wrinkle In Time this November in Los Angeles.

selma-ava-duvernay
Image via Paramount Pictures

a-wrinkle-in-time-book-cover