Jennifer Lee is on fire lately! After co-writing Disney hits Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen, she’s set her sights on a new project for the Mouse House. Only this time it’s live-action, and an adaptation of a beloved childhood novel—Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time.
Lee takes over the project from Jeff Stockwell, who had first tackled the screenplay when the adaptation was first announced in 2010. It made sense, as he had adapted Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia. However, according to Variety, Lee wowed executives with her emphasis on strong female characters and her ideas for building L’Engle’s twisty, terrifying sci-fi world filled with tesseracts and time travel. No surprise, those are the two elements that made Frozen and Ralph so compelling to movie audiences.
We’re especially interested to see Lee’s take on protagonist Meg Murry, intellectually wise beyond her 14 years but still rather emotionally immature; Frozen’s Anna likely owes a lot of her spirit to Meg. The same goes for Meg’s child prodigy younger brother Charles Wallace, who falls under the sway of an evil alien. It’s darker stuff than the other two movies have handled, but we think the characters are in good hands. Especially because the central tenet of Wrinkle is love.
After the awful made-for-TV movie from a few years back, I am cautiously excited about this announcement.
I’m pretty excited. Like RabidNewz, I saw that TV-movie and was not impressed. But with a larger budget and better cast and crew, this could be a great movie.
Sounds promising!
Oh pleeeease…. OHHHHH PLEEEEEEEASE…
A good adapatation would be the exception that proves the rule, that kids’ books turned into TV series are dreck. I can’t remember the last book adaptation I saw that didn’t make me want to throw the remote at the set.
Cautiously optimistic. I think Lee’s record just might do justice to the novel, though in addition to the character challenges mentioned in the blog, there is also the challenge of plausibly depicting several profoundly gifted children (a demographic that L’Engle understood but most people don’t). Plus Disney’s live-action division has been doing an increasingly good job with visually stunning alternate worlds. Put that together with a really, really good script, not just a tolerable one (Oz The Great and Powerful and Maleficent, I’m looking at you) and you might just have something stunning.
No. Just no.
Some stories depend on the visuals being left to the imagination. A Wrinkle In Time is one of them.
This book should not be filmed.
You may be right, @6. But visual sublimity is theoretically possible. . . . Still, I agree bad visuals are worse than leaving well alone.
I loved this book. It was one of the primary gateways to wonder in my young life, and helped shape who I became. It was profound.
But the details are everything for this.
I’m curious how it would translate to modern sensibilities. I think it was largely a product of its time, in part an allegory for the enforced conformity of communism vs. the liberty of the West.
pity everyone seems to latch on to wrinkle in time, which imho is good but not her best book. have to agree with SKM on visuals. what ruined the first version was cheap scenery, a case of bad acting and toning down the dialog and subject so that adults wouldn’t be scared to let their kids see it.