“They really don’t want to make it because it’s wall-to-wall a trans cast. And so I have to get creative and figure out different ways that I can get this in front of people.”

The Matrix director Lilly Wachowski says Hollywood isn’t interested in her next movie due to transgender cast

“They really don’t want to make it because it’s wall-to-wall a trans cast. And so I have to get creative and figure out different ways that I can get this in front of people.”

By Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel is a news writer at **. He began writing for EW in 2022.

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August 12, 2026 8:05 p.m. ET

Lilly Wachowski in New York City on June 8, 2026. Credit:

Santiago Felipe/Getty

- Lilly Wachowski wrote a screenplay for a passion project titled *The Hunted*.

- The *Matrix* filmmaker said that people around Hollywood “don’t want to make” the movie due to its transgender cast.

- Wachowski is currently leading the nonprofit entertainment foundation Anarchists United.

Lilly Wachowski has a script for a passion project ready to go — but she’s not seeing any interest from Hollywood.

The filmmaker, who wrote and directed the *Matrix* trilogy alongside her sister Lana, said that the American film industry doesn’t want to back her latest project, a screenplay titled *The Hunted* that she wrote with her partner.

“This is a script that was extremely important for me to write,” Wachowski explained in an interview with KCRW’s *The Business*, noting how the film speaks to her recent experience as part of the trans community. “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.”

Wachowski said that folks in the film industry haven’t outright rejected the movie, but they haven’t been itching to invest in it, either. “When I show this script around town, and I say, ‘Hey, I wrote this really cool thing with my partner,’ you know, people like it,” she explained. “But they really don’t want to make it because it’s wall-to-wall a trans cast. And so I have to get creative and figure out different ways that I can get this in front of people.”

The struggle to secure funding led Wachowski to stage a live reading of the screenplay at the Dynasty Typewriter theater in Los Angeles, as the filmmaker wants to experience some of the creative joy of seeing her story told without needing millions of dollars for a film budget.

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“Why do we make art?” she said. “I make art because I want to feel joy. I make art to tell the truth about myself or tell the truth about the world. And so if that’s what it is, if that’s the point of it, then how does that manifest itself into something that maybe isn’t a $10 million movie? And so I got a bunch of my pals and we’re gonna do a table read at Dynasty Typewriter. And I’m just gonna go out and I’m gonna grab that trans joy with all of my friends.”

She continued, “We’re going to hopefully experience this together. And it’s not the thing that I had imagined it was gonna be, but the end result is the same.”

Lilly Wachowski in New York City on June 7, 2026.

Jason Mendez/Getty

*The Hunted* comes as part of a new chapter in Wachowski’s career as one of the leaders of the Anarchists United Foundation, an artists-owned nonprofit organization that she helped found to produce “smart genre movies” with budgets under $10 million, according to the org’s website. Wachowski leads Anarchists United with her manager Lawrence Mattis and Mattis’ former assistant Sarah Marie Flores.

“I was like, ‘You know, 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,’” Wachowski recalled. “Sarah was like, ‘That someone is us.’”

Anarchists United is structured to raise money for low-budget movies and shows that fund the nonprofit foundation.

“So you create this evergreen operation that can exist wholly outside of the studio system,” Wachowski explained. “And the studio’s mission is to support underrepresented voices and marginalized points of view.”

Wachowski was ready to fully step back from filmmaking after working on Netflix’s *Sense8* in the mid-2010s, but she ultimately was drawn back in by the promise of Anarchists United.

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“There’s a bunch of films in our slate. There’s stuff that I’m more personally involved in because I’m trying to jumpstart the company,” she explained. “I’m happy to never direct again, but for the sake of the company, I’m like, ‘Well, let me, like, pick and choose some projects that I would be cool directing, or writing and directing, and see if that gets us going.’”

She added, “I got an older body and it’s not as pliable as it used to be, but I am doing everything that I can in the pliability of my connectivity. I am pumping money into lots of short films here and there. Some are in Chicago and a lot of them are trans films. So I’m doing my best to support in any way I can.”

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