Will the Wachowskis' New Film Project Give Us the Gay G.I. Joe We've Always Wanted?

Vulture brings the details on Cobalt Neural 9, the upcoming project from Andy and Lana Wachowski. Until now, all we knew was that it was a cinéma vérité-style movie, set in Iraq, with a gay American soldier falling in love with an Iraqi soldier.

First off, the title is meaningless and appears nowhere in the script. The story is based 100 years in the future, with digital archeologists sorting through old camera cards and never aired CNN footage from the American occupation of Iraq. The story is told through a series of flashbacks from the point of view of the archeologists.

Our all-American hero is Butch, “endearing, young, and a ravishingly handsome Marine” who "just wants to f**k and kill everything" in Iraq. But then he falls in love with an Iraqi. The sex is described as graphic, like animals rutting. But as they fall for each other, somehow Butch ends up drawing attention to his lover’s ancestral home, disaster strikes, and the two become radicalized.

The two decide to rid the world of evil, and to do that they have to get rid of the architect of the Iraq invasion, then-President Bush. So they make plans to assassinate him on a visit to the country.

Jake Gyllenhaal made a name playing a gay cowboy and a straight soldier.
Will someone do the reverse?

The budget for this film is a modest $20 million, but no one thinks that a Hollywood studio will finance it. But it’s well within the means of the Wachowskis to self-finance if it’s a project they want to make. Hollywood agents have been having trouble putting stars forward because of the subject matter and the secrecy of the plot until now.

It’s certainly a new story that hasn’t been told before, and it has a sci-fi, alternate history twist that gives them some freedom with the plot. And a gay love story between an American soldier serving under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and an Iraqi Muslim is avant garde, even before you radicalize them and turn them into terrorist-assassins.

The devil is in the details. Is there enough sympathy for Butch and his lover to make them action heroes instead of villains? Or is it more complicated than that? And can Hollywood get over their fear to cast a name star for a role like this?