Lilly Wachowski Says Hollywood Is Too Scared To Fund Her All-Trans Thriller
Lilly Wachowski has spent three decades reshaping what mainstream science fiction and action films can look like, from the original ‘Matrix’ trilogy to cult favorites like ‘Speed Racer’ and ‘Cloud Atlas.’ Wachowski is known for her many sci-fi collaborations with her sister, Lana Wachowski, and after directing 1999’s ‘The Matrix,’ the two went on to helm sequels like ‘The Matrix Reloaded’ and ‘The Matrix Revolutions.’ Her name alone tends to signal ambition and genre reinvention.
Her latest project, a dystopian political thriller called ‘The Hunted,’ was supposed to continue that streak. The film is set in a dystopian American society where trans people are degraded and pushed out, and the political thriller follows two trans women searching for the culprit behind a crime that spirals into the highest levels of government. She co-wrote ‘The Hunted’ with her partner, Mickey Ray Mahoney.
That is where the story turns. Wachowski says nobody in Hollywood wants to finance the thriller, which is budgeted at around 10 million dollars, because of its trans representation. Speaking on KCRW’s ‘The Business’ podcast, she summed up the industry’s reluctance bluntly, saying people like the script, but they really do not want to make it because it has a wall to wall trans cast.
Wachowski framed the rejection as part of a broader freeze on marginalized stories rather than a problem specific to her script. She acknowledged it is not the greatest time in the industry to be trying to make these kinds of things because all of those opportunities are dwindling for folks with underrepresented voices and marginalized points of view. For a filmmaker who helped define an entire genre, that assessment carries extra weight.
Despite the setbacks, Wachowski has not walked away from the project. She described writing ‘The Hunted’ as deeply personal, calling it a script that was extremely important for her to write and a response to what is happening in the world for trans people, one that gave her a cathartic outlet for her anger and frustration.
Rather than wait indefinitely for a check to clear, Wachowski staged a live table read of ‘The Hunted’ at Los Angeles’ Dynasty Typewriter theater on August 7 and 8, gathering the cast in front of an audience anyway. She told Kim Masters on KCRW’s The Business that she is simply going to grab that trans joy with all of her friends, adding it is not the outcome she originally imagined but the end result is the same.
The financing struggle also lands against a bleak industry backdrop. GLAAD’s recent Where We Are in Film study found there were zero transgender characters across 225 films from 10 major distributors released in 2025, and the study noted a third straight year of decline in LGBTQ representation since a record high in 2023. The project is currently being shepherded through Anarchists United alongside Natasha Lyonne’s Ariadne banner as Wachowski continues searching for a path forward.
Do you think Hollywood will eventually come around and fund ‘The Hunted,’ or will Lilly Wachowski have to keep finding creative workarounds to get this story in front of audiences?
