Warner Bros. announced that The Matrix, one of the biggest film franchises to popularize virtual reality, is getting a fifth installment.

The film, which doesn’t have a release date yet, is set to be directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Drew Goddard, who is also known for writing the screenplay for The Martian (2015) and co-writing and directing The Cabin in the Woods.

“Drew came to Warner Bros. with a new idea that we all believe would be an incredible way to continue the ‘Matrix’ world, by both honoring what Lana and Lilly began over 25-years ago and offering a unique perspective based on his own love of the series and characters,” Jesse Ehrman, Warner Bros. Motion Pictures President of Production, said in a press statement obtained by The Guardian. “The entire team at Warner Bros. Discovery is thrilled for Drew to be making this new ‘Matrix’ film, adding his vision to the cinematic canon the Wachowskis’ spent a quarter of a century building here at the studio.”

This will be the first Matrix film not directed by either Lana or Lilly Wachowski, however the former is attached as executive producer. Warner Bros. hasn’t announced however whether any of the headlining series-original actors will be reprising their roles, such as Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie Anne-Moss, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantoliano.

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For the uninitiated, the first film in the series The Matrix (1999) was largely hailed at the time as a technical marvel for having pioneered the ‘bullet time’ filming technique in addition to its impressive visual effects. More importantly, it popularized VR in a way that few others have before it, namely by featuring a hardwired connection to the eponymous virtual world that is indistinguishable from reality. Series protagonist Neo (Keanu Reeves) leads the fight against an AI-controlled enemy that has captured the human race, which uses human bodies as batteries while keeping their minds blissfully unaware in the matrix.

Now, 25 years since the first in the franchise, we’re still only marginally closer to the sort of brain-machine interfaces (BMI) featured in The Matrix, with notable leads in the industry including Elon Musk’s Neuralink, a BMI startup dedicated to helping those with quadriplegia to control computers and mobile devices with their thoughts via a brain implant. In the future, projects like Neuralink aim to restore capabilities such as vision, motor function, and speech, and eventually expand “how we experience the world,” Neuralink previously said on its website.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • VR5

    This is kind of like the latest Indiana Jones movie. On the one hand I’m a big fan of Goddard (and Mangold). On the other hand the series is firmly attached to the Wachowskis (or Spielberg, in Indy’s case) so it will be a different take that I will appreciate for different reasons than the previous movies.

    Btw, if you haven’t yet seen Bad Times at the El Royale by Drew Goddard, it’s on D+ and amazing.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Oh Bad Times at the El Royale was very entertaining.

  • A VR movie, and the new aesthetics that that brings, would be nice ….
    []^ )

  • Mike

    “This will be the first Matrix film not directed by either Lana or Lilly Wachowski”
    False. It will be the 4th. They had not changed their names until after the original trilogy.

    • VR5

      Even when they change their name they still are the same person so the statement is correct.

  • ApocalypseShadow

    We just need an actual Matrix VR game based on the first film. Don’t even care if it’s The Path of Neo game ported to VR. It’s like a no brainer to put in VR. Just like Aliens, Terminator, Predator, Robocop, etc.

    • “Alien” is the dream ….
      A fullsize reproduction of the “Nostromo”,
      with areas of the ship we’ve never seen before,
      all with a fully interactive enviornment: keyboards, touchscreens, etc.
      []^ )

  • Actually there is only one Matrix movie, the others don’t exist

  • Rupert Jung

    The 4. movie was the most horrible cinema experience of my life. Downright offensive. It destroyed an entire universe and trolled all (ex) fans so hard that I will never ever watch anything with the name ‘Wachowski’ in the cast roll. If they let Lana influence this movie in any way, no matter what, they can keep it.