If there's a film that may come out of nowhere to be a dark horse Best Picture contender, Hidden Figures has a chance of being it. Momentum has been building for a couple of months now, not only for Ted Melfi's direction but also for the performances by Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monae as a trio of African-American women who were crucial to the Space Race. It's the kind of inspirational true story that has the potential to be a populist favorite, and now a new trailer has arrived to show why so many are eager for this one.
Henson, Spencer, and Monae play brilliant mathematicians Katherine G. Johnson , Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, who broke through racial barriers and provided invaluable calculations to launch John Glenn into orbit. It's a story that I freely admit to being ignorant of, and I suspect many others were the same. All the more reason for people to turn out and see it.
Also starring Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons, Kimberly Quinn, Mahershala Ali, Aldis Hodge, and Glen Powell, Hidden Figures opens Christmas Day in limited release, the goes wide on January 6th.
