Ethan Hawke to direct daughter Maya Hawke in the Flannery O'Connor feature Wildcat
Maya Hawke will lead Wildcat as famed Southern writer Flannery O'Connor
Ethan and Maya Hawke have kicked off production on their first collaboration together, a Flannery O’Connor film titled Wildcat. Maya will star as the famed Southern Gothic writer, with her father directing.
“Maya has been working hard for years to put this project together, and we’re grateful for the opportunity to introduce a new generation of filmgoers to the genius of Flannery O’Connor,” says Ethan Hawke, per Variety. “Her work explores themes important to all artists—the intersection of creativity and faith, the blurred relationship between imagination and reality.”
The film will focus on the beginning of O’Connor’s writing career, as she struggles to publish her first novel, Wise Blood. A devout Catholic from Georgia, O’Connor was invited to attend the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She was known for her grotesque and violent stories from the Southern perspective, intersecting race, faith, gender, and disability in her writing.
At the age of 25, O’Connor was diagnosed with lupus, and lived much of her life in isolation until she died at 39. Her other famous works include A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Everything That Rises Must Converge.