Neo's Back! Everything to Know About 'The Matrix Resurrections'

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Keanu Reeves will return as Neo in 'The Matrix Resurrections' in December 2021 — what to know about the new movie

After 18 years of waiting, Matrix fans will finally be able to return to the world of white rabbits and spoon-bending.

Rumors about a fourth Matrix film first began circulating in 2017, but Warner Bros. didn’t officially confirm the news until August 2019. At that point, Lana Wachowski, who cowrote and codirected the first three movies with her sister Lilly Wachowski, signed on to direct The Matrix Resurrections alone. The franchise’s stars Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Ann Moss also agreed to reprise their roles as Neo and Trinity, respectively.

Though The Matrix Resurrections will likely be one of the biggest movies of 2021, franchise newcomer Neil Patrick Harris said it didn’t feel that way during filming.

“You would think that a giant movie would be 100 percent storyboarded, animatics, and we’d be checking off shots,” the How I Met Your Mother alum told Variety in February 2021. “I think [Lana] lived that before three times over, and I would suspect that she wants to do things her own way now. It wasn’t often that you felt that you were doing something gigantic because she made it feel very intimate.”

When The Matrix hit theaters in 1999, it became an instant sci-fi classic, beloved by fans and critics alike. Viewers also praised the movie for its groundbreaking visual effects — which now seem commonplace but were revolutionary at the time. In 2000, the film took home four Oscars, including Best Visual Effects and Best Film Editing.

The cast have remained tight-lipped about the plot of the fourth movie, but Jessica Henwick has said that she thinks Lana’s filmmaking skills will once again be front and center.

“Lana is doing some really interesting things on a technical level in the same way that, you know, she created a style back then,” the actress told ComicBook.com in October 2020. “I think she’s going to change the industry again with this film. There’s some camera rigs that I’ve never seen before that we’re using. That’s probably all I can say for that.”

Reeves, for his part, is thrilled to be returning to the role that made him into a bona fide action star. “Lana Wachowski wrote a beautiful script and a wonderful story that resonated with me,” he told Empire magazine in June 2020. “That’s the only reason to do it. To work with her again is just amazing. It’s been really special, and the story has, I think, some meaningful things to say, and that we can take some nourishment from.”

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