Lilly Wachowski is one of the most acclaimed and successful filmmakers of all time thanks to her work alongside her sister, Lana, on The Matrix trilogy, Bound, and Speed Racer. Despite the box-office success and cultural omnipresence of The Matrix, the filmmaker is struggling to get her latest movie off the ground. Lilly Wachowski’s new project has relatively low production costs, but no major studio wants to fund the movie because of Lilly’s casting choices.
Speaking on KCRW’s The Business podcast, via Variety, The Matrix co-director Lilly Wachowski revealed she is struggling to get her $10-million thriller, The Hunted, produced. The film is currently in development through Anarchists United and Natasha Lyonne’s Ariadne banner. It appears that the holdup, according to Wachowski, is that no studio wants to finance a movie with a transgender cast. “People like it, but they really don’t want to make it because it’s [got a] wall-to-wall trans cast,” said Wachowski. The filmmaker, who co-wrote The Hunted with her partner Mickey Ray Mahoney, said regarding the project:
“This is a script that was extremely important for me 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…I have to get creative and figure out different ways that I can get this in front of people. I’m just going to go out and I’m going to grab that trans joy with all of my friends. It’s not the thing that I had imagined it was going to be, but the end result is the same.”
Lilly Wachowski held a live table read of The Hunted at Los Angeles’ Dynasty Typewriter Theater on Aug. 7 and 8, 2026. Regarding the table read, Wachowski told Deadline back in June, “Queer people have a necessary desire to be in community and for trans people, at this time, this need is particularly urgent. Our lives literally depend on it. The hope is that a table read of The Hunted will result in the same joy and catharsis that Mickey and I experienced while writing it.”
Transgender representation on screen was underserved to begin with, and it has only gotten worse in recent years. Many studios that once pushed for progressive and inclusive casting and storytelling began to pull back. Disney notably pulled episodes of the series Win or Lose and of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur that featured transgender characters in a move one former Pixar employee described as “political.” Meanwhile, high-profile actors are signing on to HBO’s Harry Potter series, despite franchise creator J.K. Rowling’s open hostility to transgender rights.
In the grand scheme, $10 million is not much for a thriller from one of the directors of The Matrix. That is the same budget Backrooms cost, and the film currently sits at a $393.3 million worldwide gross. It is a low-cost investment that could yield a nice profit for whichever studio produces it. Netflix, Apple, Disney, Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal Pictures, and Amazon MGM all have the money.
- Release Date
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March 31, 1999
- Runtime
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136 minutes
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