Only a few short hours ago Ava DuVernay's name was mentioned for two high-profile projects, one was Disney's adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time. The other was a sci-fi film written by Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow titled Intelligent Life. It's beginning to look like the latter is further along as Oscar winning actress Lupita Nyong'o is eyeing the lead role.
According to THR, Nyong'o has entered talks to star in Intelligent Life, which was a project Trevorrow and writing partner Derek Connolly have been shepherding for quite some time. The story, which was originally titled The Ambassador, centers on a man working for a department in the U.N. that's in charge of representing mankind in case of an alien encounter. That man goes on to fall in love with a woman who turns out to be an alien. Nyong'o would play “the woman at the center of the alien contact", presumably meaning that she is the extraterrestrial.
The tone is being described as close to Trevorrow's breakout film, Safety Not Guaranteed, meaning it's a low-key, kind of quirky sci-fi story about relationships. That was a great movie which showed Trevorrow's ability to draw terrific performances from his stars, a talent DuVernay has also perfected. Plus it will be good to see Nyong'o actually acting again. She recently did the motion-capture for Maz Kanata in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and she'll voice the wolf Raksha in Jon Favreau's The Jungle Book.
