“Trash Mountain” was supposed to be Lilly Wachowski’s solo directorial debut, but that’s no longer happening. Wachowski has exited the project, which stars Zooey Deschanel and Jacki Weaver, and has been replaced by Kris Swanberg. Production has, in fact, already begun on the film in Chicago.
What happened? We’re not entirely sure.
The last film Lilly directed was 2015’s “Jupiter Ascending,” and there have been attempts to adapt trans-themed books such as Gretchen Felker-Martin’s “Manhunt” and Jordy Rosenberg’s “Confessions of the Fox” to the screen, but none have moved forward. There was also an attempt to bring an adaptation of the sci-fi lesbian comic “Cosmoknights” to the big screen.
The fact remains that Lilly, and sister Lana, have burned many bridges in Hollywood over the last few decades. Studios are reluctant to fund their ultra-expensive and ambitious projects, which have resulted in hundreds of millions in losses. At least “Trash Mountain” was going to be a smaller scaled film.
Lilly and Lana (formerly known as Andy and Larry) had their lives changed with “The Matrix,” which captured the zeitgeist like almost no other sci-fi movie before or after it, leading to two highly profitable—if clunky—sequels in the early 2000s. Ever since then, it’s been a downward spiral.
“Speed Racer” and “Jupiter Ascending” each reportedly lost over $100M, and “Cloud Atlas” lost around $30M. Lana went on to direct 2021’s dumbfounding “The Matrix Resurrections,” which also resulted in losses of around $100M. We haven’t heard much from Lana since then, either.
That’s almost $350M in losses on just four movies. Who in their right mind would want to fund another one of their projects?
I should also mention that the duo’s 1996 debut, “Bound,” remains one of the best neo-noirs of the ’90s, and it’s up there with the best U.S. indies of that decade. But after “The Matrix,” they kept wanting their stories to get bigger and crazier, and now they’re more or less out of the game.
Bassim Tariq was the first one in the chair. The "Mogul Mowgli" director spent two years building out the Mahershala Ali vehicle before exiting in 2022, and he's now letting the air out on this one.