Lilly Wachowski has said that Hollywood financiers have declined to back her new dystopian political thriller, The Hunted, because it has an entirely trans cast. Her comments highlight the difficulty of securing mainstream funding for stories centred on underrepresented and marginalised communities, despite interest in the script itself.

The film has an estimated budget of about $10 million and was co-written with Wachowski’s partner, Mickey Ray Mahoney, as a response to the treatment of trans people. Wachowski has instead explored lower-cost ways to share it, including a live table read at Los Angeles’s Dynasty Typewriter; the project is produced by Anarchists United, Natasha Lyonne’s Ariadne Collective and others.