SPOILER ALERT
There are no confirmations and there are even indications of what the project will be like, but The Hollywood Reporter has released the exclusive that Warner Bros. is in the first phase of a reboot of 'The Matrix'. The iconic ribbon of Lilly Wachowski and Lana Wachowski premiered in 1999 and kicked off the trilogy that has become a science fiction landmark for millions of fans.
The same sources have indicated that there is potential interest in Michael B. Jordan, who played the son of Apollo Creed in 'Creed' to star it. There are not too many details on production, but the Wachowski sisters are not currently involved in the project and there is no news of their participation in this new version.
The producer of the original trilogy Joel Silver sold to Warner in 2012 all his rights for 30 million dollars and it is rumored that the study could have reticencias to include it in the project by tensions with the Wachowski. In case the tensions between director and producer are true, the sisters have far more meaning to fans than Silver.
Will Keanu Reeves be Neo again?
The involvement of the Wachowski sisters in the project is unclear, nor is Keanu Reeves, the mythical Neo, in the cast. The actor starred in the trilogy 'The Matrix', 'The Matrix Reloaded' and 'The Matrix Revolutions' and despite the fact that the last two did not have the success of the first, Reeves became one of Hollywood's richest actors.
During the promotion of 'John Wick: Chapter Two', Reeves said he would be open to returning for a new delivery if the Wachowski are involved: "They would have to write it and direct it, and then we would see what the story is, but yes, no I know, that would be strange, but why not?"
The project is too cool for trivia, but Warner Bros. seems to be thinking of Zak Penn to do the script. For Penn would not be the first time to embark on the field of science fiction, as he is the creator of Syfy's series 'Alphas' and screenwriter of 'The Avengers', 'X-Men 3: The Last Stand' or 'The incredible Hulk'.
1 The Conquest of Space
At the end of the seventies, Stanley Kubrick adapted 'The Sentinel' by Arthur C. Clarke, giving birth to one of the greatest science fiction film of all time, '2001: A Space Odyssey'.
In it, at the beginning of the 21st century, Discovery 1 embarks on a mission to Jupiter with five crew members (three of them in hibernation), and a supercomputer called HAL 9000.
With an aesthetic that today we could understand as absolutely retro, the future that brought us Kubrick makes us think how humanity would be today, almost two decades after the man had launched to the conquest of space.
2 Flying Skateboards
In 1989, Robert Zemeckis brought us the first sequel to 'Back to the Future', for which he traveled from 1955 to 2015, a future as Martian as little reality.
With an atmosphere reminiscent of that of the science fiction comics of the 1950s and 1960s, 'Back to the Future II' imagined a present with flying skateboards, with 'Jaws' dominating the billboard and a veritable attack on the fashion of the which we are glad did not come true.
3 2nd American Civil War
Pamela Anderson was in charge of starring 'Barb Wire' in 1996.
The film imagined a year 2017 in which the United States was in the Second Civil War, and where the scourge of fascists dresses in leather and responds to the name of Barb Wire, a regent of a nightclub in one of the few enclaves of resistance.
Its spirit of exploitation makes it close to dystopia, but it is funny to think how twenty years ago, Americans already thought that their country could become dominated by a tyrant who would lead the country to war. The tyrant already has it, let's hope that the armed conflict will not be fulfilled.
4 The Definitive Jail
Once again, 2017 is the year in which the film in question takes place. This is none other than 'Fortress', title directed by Stuart Gordon and starring Christopher Lambert.
The film, imagined our dominated by the ruthless policy of the "only child" in the United States, which will turn John Henry Brennick (Lambert) into a fugue of justice when he tries to cross the border into Canada with his newborn son. After being captured, he will be locked up in a maximum security prison controlled by a corporation that keeps its prisoners controlled by chips introduced inside.
In 1981, John Carpenter had already envisioned a dystopia featuring a science fiction key prison system in 'Escape From New York'. In 1996 would it's sequel would arrive, 'Escape From L.A.'.
5 Extreme Reality TV Shows
Inspired by Stephen King's 'The Fugitive', 'Pursued' was released in 1987, a title where the action took place in 2017, presenting the United States as a police state where the concept of reality show has reached a certain level of unimaginable perversion.
If in Japan they imagined a near future in which whole classes of schools were to face death in 'Battle Royale', the program of Yankee television was 'The Running Man', where convicted criminals faced assassins hired in a fight to Death to the pure style of the Roman gladiators. A man falsely convicted, Ben Richards (Arnold Schwarzenegger) will face the mercenaries and, with it, the system.
And they say that 'The Hunger Games' is original.
6 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
We owe Phillip K. Dick the story of this neo black turned cult film and a Ridley Scott for having rolled it. 'Blade Runner' is set in an absolutely futuristic Los Angeles city in the year 2019.
Scott was inspired by the city of Tokyo to imagine how the city in which the action takes place. In this time frame, Tyrell Corporation has already created the Replicants, artificial intelligence from a job in the Earth colonies, who rebel and were subjected to harsh persecution by the Blade Runners, police brigades trained to destroy the robots.
7 Neo-Tokyo
As in 'Blade Runner', the action in 'Akira' also happens in 2019, the year in which Tokyo presents itself as a megalopolis called Neo-Tokyo.
On this occasion, the city has been rebuilt from the ashes left after World War III, and Japan is a country on the verge of collapse due to constant political crises. Amid this chaos, where anarchy seems to dominate the streets, a gang leader named Kaneda will eventually discover that his best friend, Tetsuo, is the possessor of the so-called "absolute energy", which will pose a great danger to the entire city .. And the entire planet.
8 Overpopulation
Also considered today as a cult film, 'Soylent Green' was released in 1973. Directed by Richard Fleischer, his action was in New York in 2022, at which time in the Big Apple coexist more Of 40 million people, a situation that has led to the relevant way of life in miserable conditions.
In order to combat the famine, a corporation has created a synthetic food, Soylen Green, whose origin is unknown and which will try to discover Detective Thorn, played by Charlton Heston.
9 A Divided Society
Fritz Lang dared to imagine how the world would look, nothing more and nothing less than a century after its existence. Thus, 'Metropolis' was not only the title of the cult film of 1927, but also of the megalopolis in which society is divided into rich and workers.
It is the year 2027 and the constant class struggle is about to explode with a rebellion on the part of the working class, who lives in inhuman conditions underground, while those belonging to the wealthy class, do surrounded by luxuries in an environment Idyllic, imagined by Lang as the summit of industrialization and futurism, and which has little to do with the reality of today's cities, because what the German filmmaker presented us, is more associated with a steampunk aesthetic than another thing. Be that as it may, the future of 'Metropolis' could well be to which humanity is condemned.
10 The World at Peace
William Cameron Menzies adapted 'The Shape of Things to Come' by H.G. Wells, one of the fathers of science fiction, and the result was 'Things to Come'.
The story starts in 1940 (the future at the time), when a bloody world war began (Wells was only off by a year, since World War II began in 1939), and lasts until 1966, at which time a biological weapon will kill part of the population. It will be the moment in which a dark stage for history begins, dominated by clans that will put to the service of the science to create a society of the future free of conflicts, a whole utopia, reached full in 2036, dominated by technocrats .
Nothing further from the reality that surrounds us today, in a world dominated by conflict and closer to an armed global conflict than to absolute peace.