Lilly Wachowski has opened up about the attempts to get her all-trans thriller The Hunted off the ground, but the Matrix director says Hollywood’s changing landscape means she’s having to rethink the traditional way to get projects made. Wachowski has spent the past few years building Anarchists United, a production company she co-founded with producers Sarah Marie Flores and Lawrence Mattis. Appearing on the latest episode of KCRW’s The Business podcast, the director explained that the idea came up when the show she produced, Work in Progress, got cancelled. The series was something Wachowski celebrated. “There was lots of queerness in the crew. We were hiring trans actors, just to be background people,” she explained. Credit: Showtime She gave the example of casting a trans woman as a preacher without making her identity part of the storyline, adding: “There’s no mention of her being trans. She’s just a trans person in the world, as you would see a trans person in the world.” The experience had Wachowski reconsidering walking away from Hollywood, saying, “Suddenly, I was a part of this project that was championing representation like never before. And I was like, holy sh*t, this is worth sticking around for.” However, Work in Progress was cancelled after two seasons and subsequently removed from streaming. And this is when Anarchists United was born. “I was like, somebody needs to start up a company that’s in the vein of the old United Artists, where it’s like an artist-run collective,” she said. Lilly Wachowski is looking beyond Hollywood for The Hunted The company is now focused on supporting “underrepresented voices and marginalised points of view”, but Wachowski acknowledged the company has arrived at a particularly difficult period. “It’s not the greatest time in the industry to be trying to make these kinds of things because all of these opportunities are dwindling for folks with those kinds of stories to tell,” she said. Wachowski provided The Hunted as an example, a thriller she wrote with her partner, Mickey Ray Mahoney. “This is a script that was extremely important for me to write,” she explained. “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.” But despite positive responses to the script, Wachowski claims its all-trans cast has made getting the project off the ground through conventional means difficult. “When I show this script around town, and I say, ‘Hey, I wrote this really cool thing with my partner,’ people like it, but they really don’t want to make it because it’s like wall-to-wall trans cast,” she said. But rather than simply waiting for someone to finance it, Wachowski is reconsidering what getting The Hunted in front of an audience could actually look like. “I have to get creative and figure out ways, different ways that I can get this in front of people,” she continued. “How much can I make this film for? Or is it a film? Is it something else?” For now, it’s about taking The Hunted off the page, with Wachowski staging a live table read of the screenplay at LA’s Dynasty Typewriter this month, bringing together friends and collaborators to experience the story with an audience. “If that’s the point of it, then how does that manifest itself into something that maybe isn’t a $10 million movie?” she said. “I’m just gonna go out and I’m gonna grab that trans joy with all of my friends.” For all the latest film and TV updates and hot takes, like our Facebook page. Featured image credit: Warner Bros./CraSH/ImageSPACE/Shutterstock Post navigation Next storyPrevious story
