Hollywood Doors Close on Lilly Wachowski’s Trans-Cast Thriller

Lilly Wachowski is running into a familiar problem in Hollywood: no one wants to finance her new movie and she says it’s because the cast is entirely transgender.

The Matrix director opened up about her struggles during an interview with KCRW’s The Business, discussing her upcoming film The Hunted, which she co-wrote with her partner Mickey Ray Mahoney. The script has impressed industry insiders, Wachowski explained, but studios have balked at backing the $10 million project once they learned about its all-trans ensemble.

“The screenplay gets good reactions,” Wachowski said, but added that executives have been unwilling to take the financial leap.

The filmmaker conceived The Hunted as a deeply personal project, born from the experiences of transgender people facing an increasingly hostile cultural moment. She described writing it as a way to channel her rage and frustration about the state of the trans community.

Despite positive feedback on the script itself, studio doors have remained firmly shut.

Rather than shelve the project, Wachowski decided to take matters into her own hands. She organized a live reading of The Hunted at Los Angeles’ Dynasty Typewriter theater, giving audiences a chance to experience the story without waiting for traditional film financing to materialize.

“Making art is about finding joy,” Wachowski reflected, “and telling the truth about yourself and the world.”

The filmmaker has long championed underrepresented voices through her work with the Anarchists United Foundation, an artist-led production company dedicated to backing projects from marginalized filmmakers with modest budgets. Her track record speaks for itself she and her sister Lana have helmed cultural touchstones like The Matrix trilogy, Cloud Atlas, and the acclaimed Netflix series Sense8, all of which explored themes of identity and inclusion.

For now, The Hunted remains without backing from major studios. But Wachowski’s determination to tell this story whether on a traditional film set or through live performance underscores a persistent Hollywood problem: the reluctance to finance films centered on transgender characters and performers, even from Oscar-winning directors.