Details Emerge on the Wachowskis' Cobalt Neural 9
Thu, September 23, 2010 
In the two years since the belly-flop heard round the world (aka Speed Racer), there was no telling what the Wachowskis were cooking upstairs for their latest. It doesn't help they're so damn secretive, and notoriously press-shy. If they wished to return to the graces of fandom, then they'd have taken the Superman gig offered to them.
Instead they've been working on what was initially described as a hard-R gay love-story between a U.S. soldier during the second Gulf War and an Iraqi with elements set in the future. Vulture has more details on the project titled Cobalt Neural 9. I’m not one to normally slap on a "Spoiler Warning" tag. But I'll make an exception here:
"First, if you don’t understand the title, don’t worry: Our spies who read the screenplay tell us it's gibberish designed to inspire debate as to its meaning; it appears nowhere in the actual script.
Secondly, part of the film takes place in the future all right — nearly a hundred from now. But its main story is told in Cloverfield-esque flashbacks by digital archeologists sorting through “found footage” from CNN and chips from old digital cameras from the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The heroes are indeed a gay American soldier named (with little irony) "Butch" and an Iraqi soldier turned militant. Butch is endearing, young, and a ravishingly handsome Marine. Our spies tell us that he "just wants to fuck and kill everything" in Iraq — until, that is, he falls in love with the Iraqi.
The two meet while Butch is on a combat patrol in Iraq during the second Gulf War, and soon enough, the two are engaged in graphically described sex (actual line from the script: "They rut like animals behind this fence") albeit while disguised in burqas. The two soldiers’ relationship blossoms, and Butch begins to get to know his lover's family. But after he inadvertently draws attention to their ancestral home, disaster strikes. This tragedy radicalizes the pair and they become convinced that the only way to rid the world of evil is to kill the architect of the invasion, the then-president of the United States, George W. Bush. And so, during one of the president’s secret sorties to Iraq, they attempt to assassinate him."
If I Love You Phillip Morris struggled for U.S. distribution, I wish them the best of luck doing so with this one. Not surprisingly, all signs point to this being independently financed. This already sounds like the kind of project that’ll spark debate on talk radio and the 24/7 cable news-networks.
Reader Comments (3)
Kind of seems like they've got a grudge against the general public for Speed Racer and this is their retaliation.
It sounds pretty damn awful.
The Wachowskis need a comeback their last 3 movies they've directed(Matrix Sequels and Speed Racer) have sucked. Hopefully this movie will be good.