‘A Wrinkle in Time’ Screenwriter On Adapting Iconic Novel

As Disney releases A Wrinkle in Time this weekend, another iconic novel joins the ranks of those adapted to live-action, a task which was no easy feat for screenwriter Jennifer Lee.

Lee, who boasts an impressive list of animated titles like Frozen and Wreck-It Ralph on her writing resume, not only adapts the iconic novel but dives into live-action for the first time with Wrinkle. “The writing part of it is the same,” Lee tells ComicBook.com. “The story is a story, is a story. And I don’t write animated films for kids, they just happen to be animated. The same with A Wrinkle In Time. It’s a family film but you write it like you would any story. You have to find the truth in the character, all of the same. The journey is different, but in terms of writing it, the same rules apply.”

Lee does manage to craft an impressively inspirational tale with Wrinkle, which was ultimately the goal for the film. “I know a lot of people have tried over the years to adapt Wrinkle,” Lee said. “And it’s proved to be a challenge. And I think one of the great challenges is, if you try to stay too true to the book, you will actually fail the book. The book is such an ethereal, spiritual, different journey that, I think is very personal. And when you start making choices that you have to put on film, that’s when you start getting people, ‘Well, that’s not what I saw. That’s not what I felt.’”

Deviating from the source material at times was a choice by Lee in attempts to enhance the film, who has known and loved the A Wrinkle in Time book for years. “I kept going back to what moments make me feel, and knowing that the interpretation of that may be different now,” Lee said. “And we’ve all seen things. It’s been ripped off so many times, that there are parts you’ve seen. So we have to reinvent it. I think I just kept saying, ‘We are not making the book. We are doing a celebration of the book through a film.’”

The cinematic approach “fails at things the book won’t fail at” but “succeeds at things that the book can’t do” according to Lee. “We have to just keep acknowledging that.”

Disney’s A Wrinkle in Time is now playing in theaters.