At long last, a new trailer for the new star-studded film adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 classic A Wrinkle in Time is here — and it looks both lush and thrilling.
The book is a beloved classic for children, a sweeping, philosophical science fiction epic that follows our discontented, bespectacled teenage heroine Meg across the galaxy and through dimensions to recover her missing father. Meg is accompanied by her preternaturally bright little brother, Charles Wallace, and her schoolmate Calvin O’Keefe. (A thousand girls who imprinted on this book as children just sighed in unison at the mere mention of Calvin’s name.)
Guided by three mysterious old women who might be witches or might be guardian angels, the children make their way to the sinister planet of Camazotz, where everyone is forced to conform — and as Meg fights to rescue her father, she learns to embrace what makes her different.
In the new trailer, we get a slightly more thorough introduction than the first trailer offered for our three witches/angels — played by Reese Witherspoon (Mrs. Whatsit), Mindy Kaling (Mrs. Who), and Oprah Winfrey (Mrs. Which) — plus a glimpse at Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Meg’s brilliant, beautiful mother; Chris Pine as her missing father; and Zach Galifianakis as a character known as the Happy Medium. (While the book is uniformly white, director Ava Duvernay has said she always knew her adaptation would have to have a multi-racial cast.)
There’s also a sampling of the movie’s fantastical special effects and whimsical settings, as well as a fair amount of exposition: The trailer opens by filling in some of Meg’s (Storm Reid) backstory, then sets up her inter-dimensional journey to find her dad as Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which dramatically explain that he’s trapped by an evil energy, “and the only one who can stop it is you.”
A Wrinkle in Time is scheduled to hit theaters on March 9, 2018.
