‘A Wrinkle in Time’ director Ava DuVernay brings classic novel to big screen

Despite being one of the biggest celebrities around, Oprah Winfrey had trouble picturing herself 35-feet-tall.

To film “A Wrinkle in Time,” director Ava DuVernay put Winfrey in front of blue screen to turn her into a towering magical being. To interact with the normal-sized characters, including the film’s lead actress, 14-year-old Storm Reid, who plays Meg, Winfrey had to look at dots on the floor. But her eyes kept straying to the kids seated nearby.

Filming went on like this until DuVernay took extreme measures.

“Sometimes she’d want to talk to the kids and I’d say like, ‘O.W., you’ve got to look at the dot on the floor,’” DuVernay told amNewYork. “So she’d start looking at the dot on the floor and then she’d look over at the kid . . . So at one point, I had Storm go over and crouch on the floor, on the dot, so she could look at the dot, so we could do the scene.”

For DuVernay, the Disney movie was a completely different universe from “Selma.”

Opening Friday, “A Wrinkle in Time” is based on the 1962 children’s sci-fi novel by Madeleine L’Engle. However, to DuVernay and girls of color everywhere, the movie is so much more than that.

It meant so much to DuVernay that she picked this project over Marvel’s offer to direct “Black Panther.” Never having read the book before receiving the script, she was inspired by Meg’s potential.

“A Wrinkle in Time” is centered around Meg (Reid), a teenage girl struggling with her identity, whose scientist father went missing while attempting to travel across the universe. When three magical entities (Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, and Winfrey) offer to help Meg, she brings her peculiar brother (Deric McCabe) and a classmate (Levi Miller) along to search for her father — and battle evil along the way.

“When I read the book, I just fell in love with it and I fell in love with Meg and I wanted to tell a story about a girl who could be the hero of the story,” she recalled. “She’s not a Jedi, she’s not a superhero, she’s just a regular girl with glasses, but she’s very special inside, she just doesn’t know it yet — and I could relate to that.”

To portray that, DuVernay needed a special young actress who could also connect to Meg. Enter Reid, previously best known for a part in “12 Years a Slave.”

“Meg is determined and she’ll fight for what she loves and what she’s passionate for,” Reid said. “And I feel like I don’t take no for an answer when I’m very passionate about something. . . . She’s a teenager growing up and I feel like us young girls can relate to Meg because we’re just trying to grow up and we’re trying to figure out who we want be around and who we want to be.”

DuVernay was ready to battle cynics who would assume the movie would be “‘Selma’ in space.” The 45-year-old filmmaker wanted to make the kind of movie she loved as a child — like “The NeverEnding Story” and “Escape to Witch Mountain.” “They don’t really make those movies anymore for kids,” she explained.

Especially not for children of color. DuVernay made the choice to diversify the cast by changing Meg and her brother, who are implied as white in the book, to biracial characters, refusing to worry about racist backlash. “I knew we were doing it from a good place and I knew there were so many people who loved the book,” DuVernay said, “especially young people who don’t really think the same way older people do in terms of those racist ideas.” She said of people who didn’t accept the diversity, “Haters gonna hate.”

Reid believes that moviegoers of all backgrounds can see themselves in Meg.

“I just want them to know that we’re all beautiful and we can all do what we want to do and we can all achieve our dreams the way we are,” said Reid. “And if we want to save the world, then we can save the world. Girl power rules!”