Director Lilly Wachowski (of The Matrix fame) has explained why she originally stepped away from Hollywood. After making their debut on the cult crime-thriller Bound in 1996, Lilly and her sister Lana changed the game in Hollywood with their followup on 1999's The Matrix. A mind-bending sci-fi tale set in a post-apocalyptic world where the majority of humanity has been enslaved by machines and live in a virtual reality, the film was a critical and commercial hit that took home four Oscars for its efforts (not to mention, inspired many an imitator with its revolutionary bullet-time action sequences).
The Wachowskis would go on to helm a pair of back-to-back sequels (The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions) that grossed more than $1.1 billion combined and were equally massive in scale, but criticized for failing to match the creative accomplishment of the original film. After that, the siblings went onto tackle a series of narratively and technically challenging movies, including a live-action adaptation of the Speed Racer anime, a big screen version of the novel Cloud Atlas, and an original space opera epic titled Jupiter Ascending. However, all three of these movies failed to cover their expenses at the box office and proved to be relatively divisive among critics and general audiences alike.
After coming out as a transgender woman, Lilly Wachowski temporarily stepped away from filmmaking in the mid-2010s, at a time when she and Lana were working on their Netflix sci-fi series Sense8. In an interview with THR, Lilly spoke about her experience in Hollywood and what prompted her to leave the movie and TV industry for a while:
I got in when film was at its peak, before boards and marketers found a way to wrangle movies. Eventually, all those people and institutions ended up in the room with you and specifically behind the typewriter and behind the lens and behind the Avid. It created a bit of tension for me personally. I got to this breaking point and I had to walk away.
Around the same time the Wachowskis were tackling ambitious one-off projects like Cloud Atlas during the late 2000s and early '10s, franchise moviemaking was beginning to take over Hollywood thanks to the rise of the MCU and the many shared universes that sprung up in its wake. One can understand why this change in the industry would be especially frustrating for Lilly Wachowski, a filmmaker who got her big break making a highly stylized blockbuster with a decidedly critical perspective towards capitalism and corporations. On a more personal level, it's long been reported the Wachowskis also had to deal with a lot of creative interference from Warner Bros. while making Jupiter Ascending (even more so than on their previous films with the studio). So, it stands to reason that movie marked the breaking point for Lilly, and further explains why she hasn't directed a feature film since.
In the aftermath of her departure from Hollywood, Lilly focused on "personal world building" (including, studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and prioritizing her gender transition). She has since returned to writing for the acclaimed Showtime LGBTQ+ dramedy series Work in Progress, but is not involved creatively with the upcoming The Matrix 4, which Lana Wachowski is directing on her own. The latter is said to be taking some pretty big swings with her continuation of the sci-fi property, so hopefully she'll be able to recapture some of the revolutionary spirit of the original Matrix in the process.
Source: THR
