First Pics To Hidden Figures With Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer & Janelle MonáePosted by Wilson Morales
May 21, 2016
Source: NYTimes
The New York Times recently ran the first pics to the Fox 2000 mathematician film “Hidden Figures, ” which stars Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and singer Janelle Monáe.
The film tells the astonishing true story of female African-American mathematicians who were invaluable to NASA’s space program in the Jim Crow South in the early 1960s.
Also featured in the film are Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons, Mahershala Ali, and Aldis Hodge and Glen Powell
Ted Melfi will direct the film as well as a producer along with Peter Chernin and Jenno Topping through Chernin Entertainment; and Donna Gigliotti of Levantine Films. Grammy Award winner Pharrell Williams is also onboard as a producer and music composer.
Based on Margot Lee Shetterly book “Hidden Figures: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race,” the film will focus on centers on Katherine Johnson (Henson), a brilliant African-American mathematician who, along with her colleagues Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) and Dorothy Vaughan (Spencer), served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in U.S. history — the momentous launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit, and his safe return. The three women crossed all gender, race and professional lines while embarking on the mission.
Desperate to get ahead of the Russians, the nation’s space agency had hired the brainiest people it could find, among them Ms. Johnson, who, in 1937, graduated from college in West Virginia summa cum laude at 18. But, for years at the agency, women often worked in separate rooms from men, and the white women were segregated from the black women, who were known as “colored computers.” Ms. Johnson’s push to be heard by the men — her calculations, once they heeded her, proved invaluable — lies at the film’s narrative core.
Costner is set to play the head of the space program while Powell plays astronaut John Glenn, who was on the Friendship 7 mission in 1962 and became the first American to orbit the Earth.
“Hidden Figures” is set to hit theaters on January 13, 2017.
