The Wachowskis
Lana Wachowski (born Laurence Wachowski; June 21, 1965)[3] and Lilly Wachowski (born Andrew Paul Wachowski; December 29, 1967)[4] are American film and TV directors, writers, and producers.[5] The sisters are both trans women.[6][7][8][9] Collectively known as the Wachowskis[a][11] (/wəˈtʃaʊski/), they have worked as a writing and directing team through most of their professional film careers.
They made their directing debut in 1996 with Bound, and achieved fame with their second film The Matrix (1999), a major box office success for which they won the Saturn Award for Best Director. They wrote and directed its two sequels: The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions (both in 2003), and were involved in the writing and production of other works in that franchise.
Following the commercial success of The Matrix series, they wrote and produced the 2005 film V for Vendetta (an adaptation of the graphic novel by Alan Moore), and in 2008 released the film Speed Racer, a live-action adaptation of the Japanese anime series. Their next film, Cloud Atlas, based on the novel by David Mitchell and co-written and co-directed by Tom Tykwer, was released in 2012. Their film Jupiter Ascending and the Netflix series Sense8, which they co-created with J. Michael Straczynski, both debuted in 2015; the second season of Sense8 in 2016 was Lana's first major creative undertaking without Lilly, who took a break for it.[12][13]
They completed The Matrix, a science fiction action film, in 1999. The movie stars Keanu Reeves as Neo, a hacker recruited by a rebellion to aid them in the fight against machines who have taken over the world and placed humanity inside a simulated reality called "the Matrix". Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving and Joe Pantoliano also star. The movie was a critical and commercial hit for Warner Bros. It won four Academy Awards, including for "Best Visual Effects" for popularizing the bullet time visual effect. The Matrix came to be a major influence for action movies and has appeared in several "greatest science fiction films" lists.[29][30][31] In 2012, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant."[32]
After its success, the Wachowskis directed two sequels back-to-back, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, both released in 2003. The Matrix Reloaded received positive critical reception, although not on the level of the original.[33] It became a major box office hit, retaining the spot of the highest-grossing R-rated film for over a decade (until 2016's Deadpool).[34]* The Matrix Revolutions* received a mixed critical reception and performed lukewarmly in the box office. While it was profitable it made slightly less money than the original film.[35][36]
During production of the first film, the Wachowskis and Spencer Lamm, who ran the film's official website, developed comics based on the setting of the film, which were published free of charge on the website. These and a few short stories were released in three series from 1999 to 2003, with several of them (along with new material) collected in two print volumes in 2003 and 2004. The Wachowskis themselves contributed "Bits and Pieces", a prequel to the movie that explains the origins of the Matrix, featuring illustrations by Geof Darrow, the movie's conceptual designer. Other writers and artists that contributed to the series include Neil Gaiman, Dave Gibbons, Paul Chadwick, Ted McKeever, Poppy Z. Brite, and Steve Skroce.
After Lilly Wachowski came out as transgender, she encouraged looking back on her and Lana's works "through the lens of our transness", saying that the themes of identity, self-image and transformation are apparent in The Matrix, which is "about one person’s struggle with and eventual acceptance of an identity that exists beyond the borders of a rigidly defined system".[37]