Lilly Wachowski

The Wachowski sisters' sci-fi Netflix series 'Sense8' has reached the end of the road after just two seasons, as the heads of the streaming service reveal that they have axed the show from their roster. It's not the first Netflix series to get the chop this early on and it won't be the last.

The cast of 'Sense8'

It may be an important development for diversity in television, having won the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Drama Series last year, but the ratings regrettably just weren't high enough for 'Sense8' to continue on Netflix for another season.

Continue reading: 'Sense8' Is The Latest Netflix Show To Get The Chop

Director Lilly Wachowski has made her first public appearance since coming out as a transgender woman in March. Wachowski, who co-directed The Matrix films with her sister Lana, appeared at the GLAAD Media Awards in Beverly Hills, California, on Saturday night, accepting the outstanding drama series award for her Netflix hit, 'Sense8'.

Lilly Wachowski at the GLAAD Media awards.

"Okay, first of all… ta-da," Wachowski said when she appeared on stage to collect the award (via People). "Tonight is a culmination of confluent events for me. This was something that I became aware of shortly after receiving tonight's invitation to tonight's affair.”

Continue reading: Lilly Wachowski Makes First Public Appearance At GLAAD Awards

Lilly Wachowski, one-half of the filmmaking duo behind The Matrix has come out as transgender. Lilly, who was formerly known as Andy Wachowski, made the announcement via a statement to Chicago’s Windy City Times, after saying she had been threatened with outing by a journalist from the Daily Mail. In 2012 Lilly’s sister and collaborator Lana also came out as a transgender woman.

Second Wachowski sibling comes out as transgender https://t.co/vVn5ToEZZ6 pic.twitter.com/BabuDJAMi7

— Variety (@Variety) March 9, 2016

Continue reading: 'Matrix' Co-Director Lilly Wachowski Comes Out As A Transgender Woman

Netflix has renewed Sense8 for a second season. The streaming service made the announcement via Twitter on Saturday morning (8th August). Netflix also included a special video for fans of the show which featured the Sense8 cast members celebrating the show’s first birthday and announcing its second season. 

Sense8 star Jamie Clayton at the L.A. premiere of Jupiter Ascending in February 2015.

Read More: Sense8: New Netflix Series Announced From Wachowski Siblings.

Continue reading: ‘Sense8’ Renewed By Netflix For Second Season

Press shy and intentionally low-profile, the Wachowski brothers (now brother and sister) occupy a rare position in Hollywood of being household names, responsible for some truly awe-inspiring works of cinematic innovation that have enamoured critics and audiences alike. Yet, unlike directors of a similar calibre and position in pop culture- Tarantino and JJ Abrams for instance, they allow their films to speak for themselves, eschewing the usual directorial promotional tropes and refusing interviews.

 
Andy and Lana Wachowski rarely appear in public and never commit to promoting their films.

They are so ardent to withhold anonymity in favour of greater artistic candour that it is reportedly highlighted in the Wachowski’s contracts that they will remain unburdened by arduous press commitments. Despite this, the pair are amongst the biggest names in Hollywood, thanks mainly to the Matrix trilogy, which revolutionized the cinematic experience. A Wachowski Bros. picture is synonymous with outstanding cinematography, multi-dimensional plots and a visual feast that is never short of the spectacular. Positing a triple threat of sorts, the Andy and Lana have proven their ability to not only direct a picture, but also to produce and pen truly original and brilliant screenplays in their own right.

Continue reading: The Movies Of The Wachowski's: From Best To Worst

The Cloud Atlas directors Andy and Lana Wachowski have announced their next move in the world of entertainment. The sibling directors will be teaming up with the online streaming service Netflix, the BBC reports, to create a series entitled Sense8. Talking about how they arrived at the idea for the show, the directors revealed in a statement “Several years ago, we had a late night conversation about the ways technology simultaneously unites and divides us. Out of that paradox Sense8 was born.”

The show will make its debut in late 2014 and is described as “a gripping tale of minds linked and souls hunted.” Let’s hope it fares better than their ambitious adaptation of Cloud Atlas which looked brilliant on paper, but ended up bamboozling both critics and audiences alike. The Wachowskis are also responsible for creating The Matrix, and have also directed movies such as V For Vendetta and Speed Racer. Netflix previously announced their intention to make a minimum of five original shows every year, giving viewers good reason to subscribe to their service, over any other (assuming the shows are any good, of course). They started of with a remake of House of Cards, starring Kevin Spacey, which has been hugely popular and is soon to embark on a second series.

This spring, Netflix will be streaming the horror series Hemlock Grove as well as the highly anticipated comeback of Arrested Development. 

Continue reading: Sense8: New Netflix Series Announced From Wachowski Siblings

After green-lighting the Wachowski's big screen adaptation of David Mitchell's apparently "unfilmable" novel Cloud Atlas, the head honchos at Warner Bros probably half expected it to be competing for the major prizes at the Oscars. A quick glance over the nominations will tell you the Tom Hanks starring movie will play no part in the celebrations at the Kodak Theatre on Sunday (February 24, 2013). Its solitary nod at the Golden Globe Awards was for Best Original Score.

Shot on a budget of $100 million, Cloud Atlas has been no financial disaster - it easily made back the cash at the U.S. box office and a European release, together with DVD and Blu-Ray sales means it'll become a tidy earner, though critically, it fell way below expectations. Overblown at nearly 3 hours long, the Wachowski's film left critics and audiences empty, though it won praise for impressive visuals and cinematography - something that will be of no comfort to writer Mitchell, whose novel is loved for its depth and sprawling narrative. "Finally, what sinks "Cloud Atlas" is not the largeness of its ambitions but the lack of skill it displays in terms of writing, directing and acting," said Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times. Xan Brooks of The Guardian said, "Unfortunately, these bold ambitions come to naught. They confuse the cosmos with the costume department and wind up lost in a world of wigs and bonnets."

Continue reading: Cloud Atlas: The Would-Be Oscar Contender That Went Oh So Wrong

Cloud Atlas has flopped into third place in the US Box Office after a dreary weekend saw the film, which many thought would do well commercially, take in less than Hotel Transylvania and chart topper Argo in US markets.

The film, an adaptation of the David Mitchell novel of the same name, was brought to the screen by Matrix masterminds Andy and Lana Wachowski and Run Lola Run director Tom Tykwer, with many foreseeing the time-jumping epic to make a huge impact at the box office. Instead the film only brought in a meagre $9.4 million over its opening weekend, a long way from the predicted $100 million it had budgeted for.

The film, which stars Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant and Hugo Weaving among others, follows the inter-twining lives of a host of different people throughout time, following the implications of actions made in past lives and how the soul lives on through time. It has so far split opinion right down the middle, with some marvelling and the ground breaking spectacle and story telling of the film, whilst other have smeared it for being overly ambitious.

Continue reading: Cloud Atlas Flops On Opening Weekend At Box Office

With his upcoming film, Cloud Atlas ready for release later this month, one of the film’s stars, Tom Hanks, has alluded to the deep plotline that runs through the book adaptation and said that the film is as “risky as Inception” was when it was release in 2010.

Hanks was plugging his new film during a chat with Canadian paper The Montreal Gazette, when he brought up the Christopher Nolan film, suggesting that it was the closest thing to compare to his latest movie outing. Cloud Atlas follows the intertwining lives of a massive cast that drifts between centuries both past and present, examining the impact of fate on good and bad behaviour.

In his discussion, he not only had praises to sing for Brit-director Nolan, but also his three “bold” directors for the upcoming project; Tom Tykwer and Lana and Andy Wachowski. And if three directors were a lot to take on board, then the number of characters the actors have to transform themselves into throughout the film will take some effort to get your heads round too, with Hanks alone taking on 6 different roles.

Continue reading: Cloud Atlas Is As Risky As Inception, Says Tom Hanks