Lilly Wachowski explains why she didn’t return to make The Matrix 4
By Dan Selcke
The Matrix: Resurrections is directed by Lana Wachowski, one half of the directing team behind the original trilogy. But why wasn’t Lilly Wachowski back?
Nearly 20 years after the last entry in The Matrix franchise, The Matrix: Resurrections is coming out around the corner. We’re finally starting to get the first plot details of the new movie, which will see Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss return to the roles of Neo and Trinity. The whole thing is directed by Lana Wachowki, who directed the original with her sister Lilly.
But why isn’t Lilly back? The filmmaker explained on a TCA panel for her new Showtime series Work in Progress. “There was something about the idea of going backwards and being a part of something that I had done before that was expressly unappealing,” she said. “Like, I didn’t want to have gone through my transition and gone through this massive upheaval in my life, the sense of loss from my mom and dad, to want to go back to something that I had done before and sort of walk over old paths that I had walked in, felt emotionally unfulfilling and really the opposite. Like I was going to go back and live in these old shoes in a way. And I didn’t want to do that.”
Lilly and Lana used to direct all their projects together, but Lilly stepped away from filmmaking for a while after making the first season of Sense8 for Netflix, which dropped in 2015. “I got out of my transition and was just completely exhausted because we had made Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending, and the first season of Sense8 back-to-back-to-back,” she explained. “We were posting one, and prepping the other at the exact same time. So you’re talking about three 100-plus days of shooting for each project, and so, coming out and just being completely exhausted, my world was like, falling apart to some extent even while I was like, you know, cracking out of my egg. So I needed this time away from this industry. I needed to reconnect with myself as an artist and I did that by going back to school and painting and stuff.’”
Fair enough. And hey, if The Matrix: Resurrections takes off like the original did, maybe there’ll be room for a sequel or even a new trilogy. In the meantime, Work in Progress — where Lilly serves as showrunner, executive producer, writer, and director — just premiered its second season this week on Showtime. “It felt like a new thing that I could go do and be myself in, more than go back and do the same thing that I sort of did before,” Lilly said. “And so, like Lana made [The Matrix 4] for different reasons… I can’t speak for her, but that’s what I was feeling at the time.”
The Matrix: Resurrections will premiere in theaters and on HBO Max on December 22.
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h/t The A.V. Club