Ava DuVernay Will Make ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ For Disney

Ever since Selma debuted in December of 2014, we’ve been waiting to see what its terrific director, Ava DuVernay, would do next. Would she direct Black Panther? Would she write a screenplay of her own to direct?

We know DuVernay is close to directing Intelligent Life, a sci-fi movie that would star Lupita Nyong’o, but Deadline says that she’s “just been set” for another project: An adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time, the beloved fantasy novel by Madeleine L’Engle. Even more intriguingly, Deadline says the screenplay for the adaptation will be written by Jennifer Lee, the co-director and writer of Disney’s Frozen and a co-writer of their upcoming (and supposedly terrific) Zootopia.

L’Engle’s novel won numerous awards and quickly became one of those rite of passage books that almost every American kid reads growing up; I certainly did. It’s about a young girl named Meg Murry and a tesseract (though not quite the same one from the Avengers movies) and her search for her missing scientist father. Generations of Wrinkle in Time fans means there’s a built-in audience for the movie, both young and old. And, of course, the novel kicked off a whole series of books from L’Engle, so there’s plenty of franchise potential here for Disney and DuVernay. The whole package is a no-brainer.

Deadline says it’s unclear whether DuVernay will make A Wrinkle in Time or Intelligent Life first; frankly either project sounds pretty fantastic, and a step forward for DuVernay into the world of bigger budget Hollywood filmmaking. There are few directors more deserving.