Jennifer Yuh Will Direct Darkest Minds Movie Adaptation

 

Following the lead of other animation directors like Brad Bird and Andrew Stanton, filmmaker Jennifer Yuh Nelson will attempt to make the transition to live-action films. Nelson, the Oscar-nominated director of Kung Fu Panda 2 and Kung Fu Panda 3, is set to make her live-action directorial debut with Darkest Minds, a planned new franchise at 20th Century Fox.

Yuh started as an assistant on a bunch of direct-to-video animated movies for Goodtimes, before becoming a Character Designer on animated television shows like The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest and Spicy City. She landed at DreamWorks Animation around the turn of the century and worked her way up the ladder. She started as a story artist on Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and then head of story on Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas and Kung Fu Panda. It was with Panda that she was given her first shot at directing, helming the dream sequence in the original 2008 film.

She made her feature directorial debut with Kung Fu Panda 2, which at the time was the highest-grossing film ever directed by a woman. She was also one of two directors on Kung Fu Panda 3. While this will mark her live-action directorial debut, it’s worth mentioning that this isn’t the first time Yuh has worked on a live-action film project she was a production illustrator and storyboard artist on Alex Proyas’ 1998 film Dark City.