The final frontier: how female directors broke into sci-fi

It was seen as a job for the boys.

That’s changing thanks to the likes of Ava DuVernay, Patty Jenkins and Claire Denis being given opportunities to oversee big-budget productionsCritical reactions to Ava DuVernay’s A Wrinkle in Time may have been mixed, but there’s no denying it is a cinema landmark.

DuVernay is not just the first woman of colour to direct a $100m (£72m) movie, but a member of a very exclusive club – female directors of big-budget science fiction.It is sobering to realise that Kathryn Bigelow’s $42m sci-fi noir Strange Days was released nearly a quarter of a century ago.

It was a resounding flop, which no doubt convinced studios that women should not be allowed to direct the genre at all.

Since then, we have also had Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending from the Wachowskis.

But one can’t help wondering if,

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