Lilly Wachowski Is Developing a Dystopian Monster Movie With Trans and Autistic Romantic Leads

Getty Images; Peachtree Teen

While Lilly Wachowski has directed some of the best queer and trans cinema, she’s also bringing trans stories to screen as a producer, including a new animated film based on a novel.

Wachowski, who directed The Matrix and Bound alongside her sister Lana, will produce the animated film Hell Followed With Us, a full-length animated movie based on the 2022 novel by Andrew Joseph White, Deadline reports. “Hell Followed With Us shines a much-needed light on the power of found family and the imperative to protect our LGBTQIA+ siblings in the fight against dogmatic hate,” Wachowski said in a statement to Deadline.

Hell Followed With Us tells the story of Benji, a trans teen who escapes a fundamentalist cult that causes an apocalyptic event destroying much of the world’s population. Though he has broken free from the cult, he is infected with a bioweapon that is slowly turning Benji into a monster. After fleeing, Benji is taken in by a group of LGBTQ+ teens, who then team up for survival. The novel features not only a transmasculine protagonist but autistic representation, as well, in the character of Nick, the leader of the teens' found family who is “gorgeous, autistic, and a deadly shot," according to the book's publisher.

“Hell Followed With Us is such a visceral combination of dystopian fantasy, action, and horror that turning it into an epic anime-inspired feature was a no-brainer,” says Bob Higgins, the president of Trustbridge Entertainment, the production company behind the adaptation. “The gut-wrenchingly honest personal journey that is truly the heart of this story requires filmmakers with an authentic point of view to translate, and that is exactly what we’ve got with this dream team of producers and writers.”

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The book became an “instant New York Times bestseller,” according to the book’s publisher. The author is set to consult on the production; however, writers Alvaro Rodriguez and Warren Wagner will write the screenplay. Rodriguez previously wrote the film Machete and the series Seis Manos, while Wagner wrote the novel The Only Safe Place Left Is the Dark, a novel about an HIV-positive gay man who must navigate a zombie apocalypse.

Aside from producing, Wachowski recently announced that she would direct her first solo feature, Trash Mountain. The film follows a gay twentysomething Chicago resident who returns home to rural Missouri after the death of his father. She will also produce the fifth Matrix film, which will be the first without Lana and Lilly behind the camera. Wachowski told Them in 2023 that her ambition is to mentor up-and-coming LGBTQ+ directors of color.

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