Ava DuVernay Becomes First Black Woman To Direct A $100 Million Film

Ava DuVernay is important to both American and black cinema. Through her work as a director DuVernay has accomplished so much: becoming the first black woman to win the Best Director Prize at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, as well as becoming the first black female director to be nominated for a Golden Globe Award and the Academy Award for Best Picture. Now, she’s made another notable achievement — becoming the first black woman to direct a $100 million film.

According to Deadline DuVernay’s latest project A Wrinkle In Time, was a part of a round of tax credits handed out by the California Film Commission to 28 films, with Wrinkle getting the largest incentive with $18.1 million allocated. But the most telling news is that the film’s budget is going to be $100 million or more, making this the biggest live action film budget any black female director has ever had. DuVernay joins two other women who have directed live action films with a budget in this range: Kathyrn Bigelow‘s K-19: The Widowmaker in 2012 and Patty Jenkins‘ forthcoming Wonder Woman.

Also, for additional context: the budgets of the past three major motion pictures by black directors were Straight Outta Compton ($50 million); Dope ($7 million); and Creed ($40 million). So this is a very big deal.

As for the actual movie, A Wrinkle In Time is based off of the classic science fantasy novel of the same name written by Madeleine L’Engle. The story is centered on a young girl whose scientist father goes missing after he works on a project called the tesseract. The young girl befriends a wise woman by the name of Mrs. Which (who is rumored to be played by Oprah Winfrey), who helps her out on her journey.

Now that we’re beginning to get some representation behind the lens maybe we’ll get some representation in front of it. But this is a great start nevertheless, as DuVernay breaks another glass ceiling in cinema.

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