Walt Disney Company - The World of a Wrinkle in Time: The Making of the Movie

Disney

THE WORLD OF

A
WRINKLE
IN TIME

FARRAR STRAUS GIROUX

NEW YORK

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It was a dark and stormy night.

In her attic bedroom, Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Behind the trees clouds scudded frantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraithlike shadows that raced along the ground.

The house shook.

Wrapped in her quilt, Meg shook.

Madeleine LEngle, A Wrinkle in Time

In the opening lines of Madeleine LEngles classic novel A Wrinkle in Time, theres a hurricane raging just outside Meg Murrys window, and a storm in her mind as well: Why cant she get along at school, like everybody else? Why does she have to look like this, with glasses and hair that wont cooperate? Why, for that matter, does she have to be like this, impatient and intense? And where on earth is her father?

This last question nags at Meg like the persistent, cold rain. Has he left his family, as the neighbors whisper? Or has something else happened, something she cant begin to imagine?

When a mysterious stranger blows into her house, its the first step on a fantastical journey that will bring Meg closer to her father and closer, at last, to accepting herself as she is.

Megs adventure will take her across the universe, crossing space and time to reunite her family, summoning courage she never knew she had. Meg will experience evil and counter it with love. She will come to find strength and power in all her faults. Last but not least, Meg Murry will enter literary history, because this story of her journeyA Wrinkle in Timehas become a fixture in childrens literature.

Generations of kids have seen their own faults and their own strengths reflected in Meg. Readers of all ages have relished her adventure and wrestled with the larger questions the novel raises about good and evil, science and philosophy, family and self.

A Wrinkle in Time is a story for all time, whether the Cold War era it came from or the unsettled world of today. And now, at last, it is a feature film brought to life by the most creative thinkers and performers of our time. Helmed by a visionary director and crew, with a star-powered cast, Wrinkle on the silver screen is Wrinkle as its never been seen beforeand yet its every bit as adventurous, daring, and grounded in love as the novel that inspired it. Whether you are a lifelong fan of Wrinkle or entering its world for the first time, this film brings all of the storys light and darkness to life.

Let us travel together to explore the past, the present, and the future of A Wrinkle in Time.

Director Ava DuVernay

Charles Wallace and Meg, with the Murry familys faithful dog, Fortinbras

Megs rival, Veronica Kiley, and her posse

On set in the eerie, all-alike land of Camazotz

A resident of Camazotz

The in-sync ball-bouncing of Camazotz

Megs attic bedroom

Early concept rendering of Meg arriving on the planet of Orion

Wild nights are my glory, Mrs Whatsit said. I just got caught in a down draft and blown off course.

Well, at least till your socks are dry

Wet socks dont bother me. I just didnt like the water squishing around in my boots. Now, dont worry about me, lamb. (Lamb was not a word one would ordinarily think of calling Mrs. Murry.) I shall just sit down for a moment and pop on my boots and then Ill be on my way. Speaking of ways, pet, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract.

Madeleine LEngle, A Wrinkle in Time

Later in her life, after she had published more than sixty books and become one of the best-loved authors of her time, Madeleine LEngle said, Of course Im Meg, admitting that she had modeled her most famous character on herself.

From the outside, though, her early life bore little resemblance to Megs, and her family little resemblance to the Murrys.

The only child of older parents, Madeleine LEngle had no brilliant younger brother like Charles Wallace and no discussion of physics at the dinner table. Her mother was an accomplished musician, her father a journalist and novelist; their New York apartment was crammed with books and bustling with artistic guests.

LEngle herself, though, was lonely. With few children to keep her company, she turned to the company of stories and characters. Once she decided she wanted to be a writer, she never looked back. Ive been a writer ever since I could hold a pencil, she said. She wrote her first story at the age of five, and she was keeping a journala lifelong habitby the time she turned eight.

LEngle was not a distinguished student at her New York school, or at the Swiss boarding school where she was abruptly sent at age twelve while her father recovered from an illness in the Alps. It was only when she went to the Ashley Hall School, in Charleston, South Carolina, that she began to grow into her gifts. By the time she enrolled at Smith College, she was exploring a wide range of interests in literature as well as theater and student government. All the time, she was writing.