There once existed a world where a young Keanu Reeves stuck solely to mid-tier romantic dramas, and that’s a world without the Wachowskis. Thankfully, they cast his beautiful, null void of a face in the 1999 kung-fu bullet-time progenitor, and are doubly thankfully bringing his Neo back for The Matrix 4, which is currently slated for a May 21st, 2021 release. But will Neo’s twice-destroyed nemesis, Agent Smith, also be coming back?
In an interview with London’s Time Out magazine, Hugo Weaving literally said “I’m not, no,” when asked if he was going to be appearing in the upcoming sequel. But, shortly thereafter in the interview, Weaving divulged a bit about the behind-the-scenes goings-ons of the project, explaining the following:
“The Matrix is a very different story. It’s unfortunate but actually I had this offer [for his current stage play “The Visit”] and then the offer came from The Matrix, so I knew it was happening but I didn’t have dates. I thought [I] could do both and it took eight weeks to work out that the dates would work – I held off on accepting [a role in “The Visit” during that time]. I was in touch with [director] Lana Wachowski, but in the end she decided that the dates weren’t going to work. So we’d sorted the dates and then she sort of changed her mind. They’re pushing on ahead without me.”
I think the interesting thing about this whole happening is that his reappearance was obviously strongly considered and possibly even made it into the script at some point. I guess they offered him a role and he wanted to do it. So, in addition to Keanu, Carrie-Anne Moss and Jada Pinkett Smith coming back, they were, somehow, going to bring Hugo Weaving and Agent Smith back, too. While we don’t know much about the film, we do know that it’s going to feature a “young Morpheus,” whatever that means. So we’re either rebooting the Matrix for its new iteration, or we’re, ugh, time traveling. Somehow.
I wonder if Hugo’s inability to commit to the part caused some hasty rewrites though, which, knowing how intricate those Wachowski scripts can get, may have sent ripples across the entire story. Unfortunately, we can’t say for sure, as we really don’t know a whole heck of a lot about The Matrix 4 right now. At the very least, though, I am intrigued. And with production inching closer to its start date, hopefully we’ll get some more concrete updates soon.