Matrix filmmaker Lilly Wachowski says Hollywood is reluctant to finance her latest project, a political thriller featuring an entirely transgender cast, despite positive reactions to the screenplay.
Wachowski, who co-created The Matrix franchise with her sister Lana Wachowski, discussed the project, titled The Hunted, during an appearance on KCRW’s The Business. The film is reportedly budgeted at roughly $10 million and was co-written by Wachowski and her partner, Mickey Ray Mahoney.
According to Wachowski, the problem is not that Hollywood executives dislike the script.
“People like it,” Wachowski said, but added that financiers “really don’t want to make it because it’s (got a) wall-to-wall trans cast.”
A Film Born From the Current Political Climate
The Hunted is described as a dystopian political thriller set in an America where transgender people have been pushed to society’s margins and subjected to violence. The story follows two transgender women investigating a perpetrator whose trail eventually reaches the highest levels of government.
For Wachowski, the premise is closely connected to the increasingly hostile political environment surrounding transgender Americans.
She described writing the screenplay as a response to what is happening to transgender people and as a way to channel her “anger and rage and frustration.”
The difficulty securing financing is especially notable considering Wachowski’s filmmaking résumé. Alongside Lana, she helped create one of modern cinema’s most recognizable science-fiction franchises with The Matrix. She has also worked on projects including Sense8, Cloud Atlas, Speed Racer and Jupiter Ascending.
Yet even that track record has apparently not been enough to convince investors to take a relatively modest $10 million chance on a film centered entirely on transgender characters.
Finding Another Way
Rather than shelving the project, Wachowski has begun experimenting with ways to bring The Hunted to audiences outside the traditional Hollywood financing system.
On August 7 and 8, she staged a live table read at Dynasty Typewriter in Los Angeles, turning the financing setback into an opportunity to gather transgender performers and audiences around the project.
Wachowski said the experience might not be the movie she originally imagined, but the goal remains creating art, telling the truth, and finding joy with other transgender people.
“I’m just going to go out and I’m going to grab that trans joy with all of my friends,” she said.
Wachowski is also helping develop alternatives to the traditional studio system through the Anarchists United Foundation, an artist-led nonprofit focused on supporting marginalized filmmakers and producing genre projects with budgets below $10 million. She has additionally put money into short films, including several transgender-led projects.
For an industry that frequently talks about diversity and representation, Wachowski’s experience raises an uncomfortable question: whether Hollywood is equally enthusiastic about representation when transgender people are not supporting characters, punchlines, or side stories, but instead get to occupy the entire screen.
