Lilly Wachowski struggling to get ‘wall-to-wall trans cast’ movie financed

In an interview on The Business podcast, Lilly Wachowski admitted she’s struggling to find anyone to financially back The Hunted, and blamed the current climate in Hollywood.

The Matrix director Lilly Wachowski is having to get “creative” to get her new movie financed – due to its “wall-to-wall trans cast”.

In an interview on The Business podcast, Lilly admitted she’s struggling to find anyone to financially back The Hunted, and blamed the current climate in Hollywood.

She said: “[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 – [like those] with underrepresented voices and marginalised points of view”.

Lilly’s next movie is a political thriller called The Hunted, which has a rough budget of $10 million.

However, the director said that while there were people who liked the concept, her cast choice had them thinking twice.

She said: “People like it, but they really don’t want to make it because it’s [got a] wall-to-wall trans cast. I have to get creative and figure out different ways that I can get this in front of people.”

Despite the controversy her movie has caused in Hollywood, Lilly maintains it was “extremely important” for her to write alongside Mickey Ray Mahoney.

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.”

Now Lilly is looking at other ways to get The Hunted noticed, and held a live table read in Los Angeles earlier this month.

She said: “I’m just going to go out and I’m going to grab that trans joy with all of my friends. And we’re going to hopefully experience this together.

“It’s not the thing that I had imagined it was going to be, but the end result is the same.”

Both Lilly and sister Lana are trans women.

The pair first found fame directing The Matrix in 1999, and went on to helm the sequels The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions.

They also teamed up to direct Speed Racer, Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending.