Despite Lana Wachowski writing and directing 2021’s The Matrix Resurrections as a rebuke to endless Hollywood franchising and declaring under no uncertain terms that the saga belongs to her and her sister Lilly, a fifth Matrix movie is now in development and coming soon. But when? How? And what the heck could another Matrix movie even be about?
While there are still more questions than answers, we’re now beginning to hear more about the mysterious project from those involved. In a March 19 interview with Variety, Project Hail Mary screenwriter Drew Goddard spared a few words about tackling The Matrix 5 (unofficial title), although he could not divulge much at all due to the very early stages of the movie’s production.
“I can’t say too much, because we’re still in the stage of writing it,” Goddard said. “I need to give myself space to find the best story. I think the approach will be the way I approach anything, which is, do I love it?”
Goddard is a self-professed fan of The Matrix and had kind words for the sibling filmmakers who created it. “I love what Lana and Lilly Wachowski did with those movies,” he said. “They mean so much to me and I feel like they’ve had a profound impact on my creative voice. I take this responsibility very seriously. I feel the weight of wanting to do right by the fans, wanting to do right by the creators and wanting to do right for myself as a fan.”
When Variety asked Goddard if Keanu Reeves or any of the original cast are involved, the writer shut it down. “I can’t speak to that,” he said.
In the years after the original Matrix trilogy (which ended with 2003’s The Matrix Revolutions), both Wachowskis shot down chances to return to the saga; Warner Bros. approached them “every year” about it, according to Lana Wachowski at the 2021 Berlin International Literature Festival. But in 2019, after the filmmakers lost both their parents, Lana said her grief led her to story ideas that inspired her to reunite with her creations, Neo and Trinity.
“I couldn’t have my mom and dad, yet suddenly I had Neo and Trinity, arguably the two most important characters in my life,” Lana Wachowski told Entertainment Weekly in 2021. “It was immediately comforting to have these two characters alive again … You can look at it and say: ‘Okay, these two people die, and okay, bring these two people back to life, and oh, doesn’t that feel good?’ Yeah, it did! It’s simple, and this is what art does and this is what stories do. They comfort us and they’re important.”
The revelation led Lana Wachowski (without Lilly, who was occupied with Work in Progress on Showtime but gave her blessing) to The Matrix Resurrections, which opened in 2021 amid COVID-19 lockdowns and Warner Bros.’ experimentation with releasing new movies in theaters and on HBO Max the same day.
While reactions to The Matrix Resurrections were mixed, the movie is unquestionably a satire of Hollywood’s obsession with reboots, remakes, and sequels. In the movie, Neo (Reeves) is a successful, award-winning video game developer of The Matrix who feels alienated when the people around him beg for more. Lana Wachowski uses the movie to reflect on the impact of her sci-fi trilogy on popular culture and how audiences (and executives) remain imprisoned by expectations. One might even say they’re slaves to “The Matrix.”
Despite the low box-office turnout for Resurrections, work began on a fifth Matrix in 2024 when Drew Goddard delivered a successful pitch to studio executives. The new movie will not be written or directed by either Wachowski sister, although Lana is on board as executive producer. But an uncertain future lies ahead for Warner Bros. amid an impending sale to Paramount. Will The Matrix 5 actually make it to theaters? Or will a mass merger kill it before it even begins? Again, there’s more questions than answers. We’ll see soon enough how deep the rabbit hole goes.
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