It’s official: the Matrix film series is coming back with a fourth numbered entry. And it will see the return of original trilogy stars Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss to their respective roles as Neo and Trinity.

Lana Wachowski, who served as co-writer and co-director for all three original trilogy films alongside sibling Lilly, has been confirmed as the sole Wachowski family member (so far) in the writer/director chair. Wachowski will be joined by Aleksandar Hemon and David Mitchell as co-writers, whose names will likely be familiar to Wachowski fans. Mitchell’s novel Cloud Atlas was eventually developed into a feature-length film by the Wachowskis, while Mitchell and Hemon co-wrote much of the Wachowski-helmed Netflix series Sense8.

Warner Bros. Pictures chairman Toby Emmerich on Tuesday gave an official statement on the matter, telling Variety, “We could not be more excited to be re-entering The Matrix with Lana… We are thrilled that she is writing, directing and producing this new chapter in The Matrix universe.” In the same report, Wachowski told Variety, “Many of the ideas Lilly and I explored 20 years ago about our reality are even more relevant now. I’m very happy to have these characters back in my life and grateful for another chance to work with my brilliant friends.”

Neither Variety’s report nor Warner Bros.’ announcement clarified whether Lilly will be involved in the sequel’s production. Lilly Wachowski took a leave of absence from Sense8‘s second season and hasn’t been heard from professionally since. They were similarly bereft of any other information about casting, characters, or the film’s plot. A tentative production schedule is pegged to begin in “2020.” (To clarify: we currently do not know whether the film will be called The Matrix 4 or if it will receive another weirdly subtitled name. The Matrix Unboxed, maybe?)

This news follows rumors and speculation that Warner Bros. was eyeing a motion-picture reboot of the Matrix series in 2017, with actor Michael B. Jordan and writer Zak Penn reportedly attached. Those efforts eventually sputtered, and they were never so formally announced and embraced as Warner Bros. has done today with this Matrix sequel announcement.

When those 2017 rumors began circulating, Reeves, while promoting the recently launched John Wick 2, had mentioned interest in returning to the Matrix series, but only with the formal participation of the Wachowskis.

After the original Matrix exploded at the box office in 1999—and inspired an entire new generation of cinematic sci-fi moviemaking—its two sequels saw the film’s original promise crushed under the weight of a more confusing and sprawling metaverse. A series of underwhelming follow-up video games didn’t help the series’ reputation, either, though a straight-to-video series of animated featurettes, 2003’s The Animatrix, benefited from tighter interpretations of the film’s characters and ideas. The Wachowskis have since struggled to recapture the same acclaim they enjoyed from the first Matrix film, with follow-up efforts like Speed Racer, Cloud Atlas, and Sense8 all enjoying a mix of mainstream confusion and niche fandom.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1555031