A Wrinkle in Time might be the movie that finally topples Black Panther at the box office, but that didn't stop Ryan Coogler from showing love to its director, Ava DuVernay.
"Ava DuVernay is someone who makes the impossible look easy. It's why I feel privileged to call her my big sister," Coogler wrote in a letter pubished on ESPN.
They first met in 2013, a year before DuVernay released Selma. "She was already one of my heroes, and that was before she took one of the most sought-after scripts in Hollywood and turned it into the best film about Dr. Martin Luther King that anyone will ever make," he wrote.
Coogler also highlighted DuVernay's passion for equality and how she made sure that women directors and creatives were hired during the creation of her TV series, Queen Sugar and her searing Netflix documentary, 13th. He also credits her with sharing the inclusion rider clause two years before Frances McDormand spoke about it at the 2018 Academy Awards. "Ava is inclusion, equity and representation," wrote Coogler.
The Fruitvale Station director ended his note with some love for A Wrinkle in Time.
"But above all, it's a film about a little black girl with glasses—like my mom, like my wife, like my big sister Ava—who refuses to accept that her dad is lost. The main character in the film, Meg, uses her love, her hope and her kickass skills as a scientist to bring him back, and maybe she saves the universe along the way."
Read the entire letter here.
