For the first time since The Animatrix, Lilly Wachowski is producing an animated feature. She’s attached to produce an adaptation of Hell Followed With Us, the acclaimed YA novel by Andrew Joseph White. Deadline reports that Trustbridge Entertainment will produce the film alongside Wachowski and Sarah Marie Flores for her Anarchists United production company.

White’s debut novel, which was first published in 2022, takes place in a world devastated by an apocalypse unleashed by a fundamentalist cult. The book’s hero, Benji, is a transgender teen who was raised by the cult and is now on the run from them. He takes refuge at an LGBTQ+ youth center, and finds friendship – and romance – among the survivors there. Unfortunately, he has a secret; the cult infected him with a bioweapon that’s going to transform him into an unstoppable monstrosity designed to kill off everyone who managed to survive the last apocalypse. Can he harness his horrific power to protect his new friends, or is he doomed to destroy them all? Said Wachowski and Flores in a statement, “Hell Followed With Us shines a much-needed light on the power of found family and the imperative to protect our LGBTQIA+ siblings in the fight against dogmatic hate.”

Who Is Lilly Wachowski?

As a directing duo with sister Lana, Lilly Wachowski co-directed the groundbreaking lesbian noir thriller Bound before revolutionizing action blockbusters in 1999 with The Matrix. After making two sequels to that cyberpunk action thriller, the duo directed a series of visually inventive films that divided critics and audiences, including Speed Racer, Cloud Atlas, and Jupiter Ascending. They also produced the Netflix TV series Sense8. The two have subsequently gone solo; while Lana made 2021’s The Matrix Resurrections, Lilly produced and directed the LGBT-themed dramedy series Work in Progress. Earlier this year, Collider exclusively reported that Lilly is set to direct her first film since 2015, and her first ever without Lana; Trash Mountain, a comedy about a man who returns to his rural Missouri hometown to clean out his hoarder father’s detritus-filled house.

In addition to Wachowski and Flores, Hell Followed With Us will be produced by Lawrence Mattis, Daniel Dominguez, Brad Graeber, and Jacob Robinson of Line Mileage. The screenplay will be written by screenwriter Alvaro Rodriguez (Machete, Florida Man) and novelist Warren Wagner (The Only Safe Place Left Is the Dark). Animation will be handled by Powerhouse Animation Studios.

Hell Followed With Us is in development; no release date has yet been announced. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.