Frankie Shaw To Direct T Kira Madden’s ‘Long Live’ Memoir; Bow & Arrow Financing The Feature

EXCLUSIVE: Coming off a deal earlier this month to develop Judy Blume’s Wifey into an HBO limited series, Frankie Shaw is now setting her sights on the big screen again.

The SMILF creator is set to direct a feature adaption of essayist T Kira Madden’s acclaimed Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls memoir, I’ve learned.

‘T Kira’s story is a lesson in radical self-acceptance, an open-hearted love letter to our pain and our mistakes, and proof that while we are fundamentally shaped by our trauma, it does not have to define us,” Shaw told me of Madden’s true tale of a queer, Chinese, Hawaiian and Jewish teenager growing up in the glare of Boca Raton, Florida and its not so hidden underbelly.

“We feel incredibly lucky and grateful to be working with Kira, an immensely talented writer with a truly singular voice, and we look forward to bringing Long Live to life on screen,” the consistently hyphenated Shaw added.

With the rights to the 2019 book published by Bloomsbury now acquired by Bow & Arrow, the film will be produced by Shaw and Daghighian’s Our Lady Productions. Poor Behavior 2nd AD Shannon de Zeeuw will executive produced, Madden will pen the script from her book and Bow & Arrow’s Michael Sherman & Matt Perniciaro are set to finance.

“Working with Frankie Shaw has been tremendous; I think we share the same narrative sensibilities and wants—both of us are interested in that fine thread between absurdist humor and devastation,” stated No Tokens Journal founding editor-in-chief Madden. “If that thread is tight enough, it hums.”

“This isn’t a story of victimhood—it’s a story about power,” the author also notes of the book and the film project. “Together, we are creating something bold and funny and badly behaved with the queer and POC visibility I’ve been starving for,” Madden said of her collaboration with Our Lady. “Movie goers are so obviously starving for it; we’re ready.”

In a way, Long Live is also a bit of bringing the band back together.

Bow & Arrow were the money behind Shaw’s 2016 Sundance short film Too Legit with Zoe Kravitz.

The one-time Mr. Robot regular won the 2015 Short Film Jury Award for U.S. Fiction at the Robert Redford-founded festival with her SMILF short. Showcase picked up that project into what became two seasons of the Shaw-led, Rosie O’Donnell and Connie Britton starring series of the same name. The ABC Studios produced SMILF was canceled just over a year ago on the verge of work on its third season after Shaw was accused in late 2018 of misconduct on the project and other complaints. As the second season finale aired at the end of March 2019, those allegations never seemed to go anywhere but to knee cap the show’s creator – albeit temporarily it now appears. Shaw was cleared of all allegations in a subsequent investigations by ABC Studios, which resulted in a settlement.

Madden, who saw the paperback of Long Live come out earlier this month, is represented by the Wiley Agency. Shaw is repped by UTA, ID and attorneys Jackoway Tyerman Wertheimer Austen Mandelbaum Morris & Klein.

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