Trivia / A Wrinkle in Time (2018)

• All-Star Cast: Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, Chris Pine, Gugu Mbatha Raw, Michael Peña, and Zach Galifianakis, for starters.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: Chris Pine said he was interested in doing the film once he heard that the Murrys would be a mixed race family.
• Box Office Bomb: Cost $103 million to produce, another $100 million to market, and had a break-even point of about twice those two numbers combined ($400 million). It grossed just $132 million globally. Part of the reason was that the film got overshadowed by the enormous popularity of Black Panther, which was released just two weeks prior and managed to out-gross Wrinkle's opening weekend during its third. Deadline conservatively estimated its loss at $130 million, which makes it (adjusted for inflation) the eighth worst box office bomb of all time. China also refused to distribute this movie to theaters due to preference for more action-oriented blockbusters in the PG-13 territory over family-suitable fantasies. And even though this movie does rely deeply on CGI to carry its visuals, most of it went to materializing plant-based characters and environments rather than what China wanted such as dinosaurs, dragons or robots.
• Fake American: Levi Miller (Australian) as Calvin.
• Meta Casting: Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Mindy Kaling are all, as writers and/or producers, pioneers in expanding the roles available for women and people of color in the industry. Ava DuVernay has indicated in interviews that this was a deliberate consideration in casting them as characters who help make a path for a young woman of color trying to find her place in the world.
• Missing Trailer Scene: The trailers include a scene where Mrs Murry and Meg explain to Calvin about tesseracts and "wrinkling" time, which doesn't appear in the final cut of the film.
• Playing Against Type: Rowan Blanchard, best known as the kind-hearted Riley Matthews and Adam Goldberg's scifi-loving girlfriend Jackie, here plays a high school Alpha Bitch who bullies the main character.
• Playing with Character Type: Michael Peña's usual quirkiness is still present but it's soon revealed he's a bodyguard for the IT - designed to sucker Charles Wallace in for demonic possession.
• Production Posse: Oprah Winfrey, who acted in DuVernay's previous film Selma and served as executive producer on a number of her projects. Andre Holland and David Oyelowo also starred in Selma.
• Reality Subtext: Ava DuVernay lost her own father shortly before she made the film, just as Meg has to cope with her father's disappearance.
• Saved from Development Hell: The film was first greenlit back in 2010 to be produced by Bedrock Studios. It would have had a budget of $35 million, but was shelved for unknown reasons and not picked up again until 2014.
• Screwed by the Network: Disney's decision to release the film during Black Panther (2018)'s winning streak was a costly miscalculation on their part.^note Though in their defense, they weren't counting on that film becoming a global phenomenon instead of a standard popular Marvel release.
• Typecasting: The kooky, ditzy Mrs Whatsit isn’t too far off from the kind of eccentric characters Reese Witherspoon plays a lot.
• What Could Have Been: There were rumors that Kevin Hart and Amy Adams would have parts in the film.
• Word of God: After fans wondered if the absence of Sandy and Dennys meant that there weren't any plans to adapt the other books in the series where they play larger roles, DuVernay stated that if those adaptations are made, they'll be recently adopted.

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