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.
Wildcat will also star Laura Linney, Philip Ettinger, Rafael Casal, Steve Zahn, Cooper Hoffman, Willa Fitzgerald, Alessandro Nivola, and Vincent D’Onofrio.
In addition to starring in Wildcat, Maya is attached to the project as an executive producer. Although she previously appeared opposite her father in the series The Good Lord Bird, Wildcat marks the most ambitious creative collaboration between the two.
Maya—the child of Ethan and fellow actor Uma Thurman—recently waded into the nepotism baby discourse and the positive effect her parents have on her career. The Stranger Things lead will soon also star in a film opposite her mother, titled The Kill Room.
“I feel like the only way to handle the nepotism thing—which definitely gives you massive advantages in this life—is, you will get chances for free, but the chances will not be infinite,” she told Rolling Stone. “So you have to keep working and do a good job. If you do a bad job, the chances will stop. That’s my ethos.”