Dylan O'Brien, best known for the Maze Runner series, is the latest to join the upcoming film Being Heumann. He joins previously announced cast members Mark Ruffalo and Ruth Madeley. The film is an adaptation of the bestselling memoir from disability activist Judy Heumann, titled Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist.
While Madeley plays the titular role, Ruffalo essays Joseph Califano, the U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Jimmy Carter. O’Brien will play Evan White, one of the few reporters covering the San Francisco disability rights protests.
Directed by the Oscar-winning CODA-helmer Sian Heder and written by Rebekah Taussig, Being Heumann follows Judy Heumann as she leads more than a hundred disabled people to occupy the San Francisco Federal Building for a sit-in protest in 1977, seeking the enforcement of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, enabling accessibility to federal spaces to all.
Heumann was bound to a wheelchair after being affected by polio at 18 months. Subjected to discrimination since her childhood, she turned to disability rights activism after being denied enrollment in a public school. She has led several campaigns and was instrumental in the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act through her civil rights organisation Disabled in Action. She occupied leadership positions under the Clinton and Obama administrations.
The film is backed by David Permut under Permut Presentations and Kevin Walsh through The Walsh Company. John W Beach and Kevin Cleary are producing under Gravity Squared Entertainment O'Brien will next appear in a black comedy film, Twinless, directed by James Sweeney which will release in September.