While The Wachowskis haven’t shown interest in personally bringing ‘The Matrix’ back it looks like the franchise might make a return under the guiding hand of Zak Penn (‘X2: X-Men United’,’The Incredible Hulk’.) Penn has a lot of genre films under his belt and if we ignore installments like ‘Elektra’ and ‘X-Men: The Last Stand,’ there is a decent body of work there. That being said, he’s looking to branch more into the science fiction realm of things and bring back ‘The Matrix.’
This working concept though is by no means greenlit or confirmed to happen:
“I’ve been working on Matrix right now. 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.”
So at this point, the very idea could just be wish fulfillment for Penn as he loved the movie:
“I will fight people who don’t under…look, I think OASIS (the interconnected virtual space in Ready Player One) is similar, both the Matrix and OASIS 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, they’re 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.”
For Penn, bringing back ‘The Matrix’ wouldn’t even need to be a reboot or tackle bringing back Neo:
“I was at the premiere and I was still like, this was better than I ever expected. So I just think that universe is brilliant, I think OASIS is like the action-comedy version of that and it doesn’t always have to be the same characters, you could go in so many different directions so…”
While the sequels didn’t quite capture the love from audiences that the first movie did, the concept is a sound one. There are a slew of ways we could see Penn take this series if he can develop a solid enough concept to sell Warner Bros. on.
Would you be excited to revisit the world of ‘The Matrix’? What kind of a plot idea do you hope Penn would take this if it does see the light of day? Share your thoughts below!
Source: Screen Rant