‘Matrix’ Director Lilly Wachowski Says She Can’t Get Her New Film Financed Because of Trans Cast
Wachowski co-directed and co-wrote the original ‘Matrix’ trilogy with her sister, but is struggling to get her $10 million thriller greenlit.
Lilly Wachowski co-wrote and co-directed the original Matrix trilogy alongside her sister Lana, but she recently revealed that she’s struggling to get financing for her next movie because it’s got an entirely transgender cast.
During an appearance on KCRW’sThe Business podcast, per The Hollywood Reporter, Wachowski said she’s been trying to get funding for a thriller titled The Hunter, but has faced difficulty because it will feature a “wall-to-wall trans cast.” She added that it’s “not the greatest time” in the movie industry to tell stories that feature “underrepresented voices and marginalized points of view.”
“People like it, but they really don’t want to make it because it’s [got a] wall-to-wall trans cast,” she said, after explaining that she’s shopped the script for The Hunted, a dystopian thriller with a budget of $10 million, all over Hollywood. “I have to get creative and figure out different ways that I can get this in front of people.”
She shared that she wrote the script with her partner, Mickey Ray Mahoney, and it was “extremely important” for her to write. “It was a response to what is happening in the world for trans people, and it gave me a hugely cathartic receptacle to dump all of my anger and rage and frustration into,” she continued. Since she’s struggled to get financing off the ground, she hosted a live table read at the Dynasty Typewriter theater in Los Angeles earlier this month.
“I’m just going to go out and I’m going to grab that trans joy with all of my friends. And we’re going to hopefully experience this together,” she said. “It’s not the thing that I had imagined it was going to be, but the end result is the same.”
Wachowski helped bring to life one of the most iconic movies of the ‘90s with The Matrix, which grossed $473 million worldwide on a $63 million budget. She and her sister returned for The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions in 2003, while Lana wrote and directed 2021’s The Matrix Resurrections solo. Outside of The Matrix, the duo also directed the excellent cult neo-noir Bound, the 2008 live-action adaptation of Speed Racer, Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending.
