A year ago, it was revealed that Warner Bros. was interested in rebooting The Matrix franchise with writer Zak Penn (Ready Player One, X-Men: The Last Stand). Following fan displeasure at the announcement, Penn himself revealed that the new film isn’t a “remake/reboot” of the original series but in fact something else. Now Penn has gone on record with ScreenRant to say that development continues on The Matrix reboot.
“I’ve been working on ‘Matrix’ right now,” Penn confirmed. “Which is in…a phase right now. That’s a franchise I desperately want to see brought back and, I can’t go in to too much detail, but I’ve been harassing Warner Bros. for years to try to get it going again so that’s one thing I’m working on and I’ve been working on a bunch of other things too… Both ‘The Matrix’ and OASIS [in ‘Ready Player One’] are similar in that they are brilliant ideas for universes. And they are not, you know, when it came out about ‘Matrix,’ people were like ‘Oh no, there going to reboot Matrix’ I was like, Why, I’m not insane. I mean, ‘The Matrix’ is still one of my favorite…they’d re-release ‘The Matrix’ and people would go see it… It doesn’t always have to be the same characters, you could go in so many different directions.”
It was previously reported that one of the concepts Warner Bros. is considering for the film is a young Morpheus movie, with an eye towards Michael B. Jordan starring as the character. Played by Laurence Fishburne in The Matrix, Morpheus is the captain of the Nebuchadnezzar and the leader of its crew. In the context of the series, a lot of key moments in Morpheus’ past took place off screen, including his early relationship with Niobe (played by Jada Pinkett Smith in the series) and his visit to The Oracle, who revealed to him that he would find The One, all of which could be fertile ground for a solo/spin-off movie.
The Matrix was released back in 1999 to both critical acclaim and box office success, bringing in $463 million worldwide on just a $63 million budget. It was following by two sequels, The Matrix Reloaded in 2003 and The Matrix Revolutions, released six months after the first sequel, which combined to bring in $1.169 billion at the global box office. The Animatrix was an animated anthology based on the film series and was also released in 2003. There have been numerous video games, anime and comics in the franchise that have continued the story.
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