EXCLUSIVE: Disney’s A Wrinkle In Time has its patriarch, with Chris Pine joining the Ava DuVernay-directed tentpole.

The Star Trek alum will play Mr. Murray, husband to the Gugu Mbatha-Raw-portrayed Dr. Kate Murray, microbiologist and mother to main character Meg Murray played by Storm Reid, I’ve learned.

Pine is expected to get in front of the camera for DuVernay before the end of the year, with filming in Los Angeles.

A Wrinkle In Time involves a young girl whose government scientist father (aka Pine) has gone missing after working on a mysterious project called a tesseract, which involves being transported to a fifth dimension with mysterious inhabited planets. She takes part in a search for her father and sees some incredible creatures along the way.

DuVernay directs from a script by Frozen co-writer Jennifer Lee. Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Mindy Kaling also star in the pic.

A Wrinkle in Time was the first tentpole to receive tax credits under the California Film Commission’s expanded tax incentives program. Back in August, Wrinkle received $18.1 million in tax credits from the state of California. Before the Golden State incentive program was enlarged to $330 million per year back in September 2014, films with budgets of more than $75 million were not eligible for tax credits. On the film side, one of the major thrusts of the expansion of the program was to bring back big-budgeted movies to the home of Hollywood from states like Georgia, Louisiana and various Canadian provinces.

Pine is repped by CAA and John Carrabino Management.