The newest Matrix movie The Matrix Resurrections will now see the light of day in China after the film passed fairly stringent regulations for content.
The movie was given “the green light for an eventual theatrical release,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
There’s no concrete release date yet, but the end of 2021 is fairly likely.
The Matrix Resurrections is the fourth Matrix movie after The Matrix (1999), The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions (2003).
Getting a pass in China is a huge deal as international markets can be lucrative for U.S. blockbusters. For example, Avengers: Endgame is the seventh most money-making movie in China of all time, with a box office pull of $629,100,000 in the country.
Studios increasingly rely on potential international numbers when justifying a movie, even though sometimes it just doesn’t work out with China.
For example, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, a pretty big pandemic-era hit for Marvel, was banned in the country due to a controversial Fu Manchu character who didn’t even appear in the final cut.
Other movies, like Mulan and Crazy Rich Asians, didn’t do well in the country.
The news about the China go-ahead could have huge implications for the total box office run of the movie.
Resurrections was directed and written by Lana Wachowski, while previous iterations were a collaboration between Lana Wachowski and sibling Lilly Wachowski. The latter recently said she didn’t want to go back to the trilogy.
“[Lana] had come up with this idea for another ‘Matrix’ movie, and we had this talk, and it was actually — we started talking about it in between [our] dad dying and [our] mom dying, which was like five weeks apart. And there was something about the idea of going backward and being a part of something that I had done before that was expressly unappealing. And, 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.”
The Matrix Resurrections hits theaters and HBO Max (for a month) on December 22.
It’s been quite a while since the last installment. Will the new movie be good? Let us know below.
