Oscilloscope Laboratories debuted the official trailer for Wildcat, the biopic drama film about American novelist Flannery O’Connor struggling to publish her first novel.
The film is based on O’Connor’s short stories and stars Maya Hawke (actor Ethan Hawke’s daughter), Laura Linney, Phillip Ettinger, Rafael Casal, Cooper Hoffman, Steve Zahn, Vincent D’Onofrio, Alessandro Nivola, Christine Dye, Willa Fitzgerald and Levon Hawke.
Release Date
Directed by actor Ethan Hawke, Wildcat world premiered at the 50th Telluride Film Festival and opens in theaters on May 3, 2024.
Synopsis
Directed and co-written by four-time Academy Award nominee Ethan Hawke, Wildcat invites the audience to weave in and out of celebrated Southern Gothic writer Flannery O’Connor’s mind as she ponders the great questions of her writing: Can scandalous art still serve God? Does suffering precede all greatness? Can illness be a blessing? In 1950, Flannery (Maya Hawke) visits her mother Regina (Laura Linney) in Georgia when she is diagnosed with lupus at twenty-four years old. Struggling with the same disease that took her father’s life when she was a child and desperate to make her mark as a great writer, this crisis pitches her imagination into a feverish exploration of belief. As she dives deeper into her craft, the lines between reality, imagination, and faith begin to blur, allowing Flannery to ultimately come to peace with her situation and heal a strained relationship with her mother.
Review
Guardian review called the film ‘mediocre’ and gave it 2 of 5 stars writing, “Ethan Hawke has good taste, and his past undertakings as director have affirmed that, but the biopic’s big built-in pitfall – the psychologically facile connect-the-dots between a figure’s life and works – swallows up his perceptible esteem for O’Connor.”
The Hollywood Reporter review had a complete different take, calling the film an ‘exquisite take on Flannery’ writing, “Many movies about young writers capture the ambition and the struggle. Wildcat understands those parts of Flannery, but in its attention to the ways life and art infuse each other, it conjures a liminal place of magic and lifeblood, of foreboding and mischief. The black-and-white “prevue” trailer that opens the movie with a burst of tawdry, breathless, serious fun (and Vincent D’Onofrio as a sheriff on the trail of scandal) is a perfect nod to the Southern Gothic categorization for O’Connor’s often shocking stories.’
Official Trailer
Watch the official trailer for Wildcat