Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss Are Returning to the World of ‘The Matrix’ for a New Movie

Considering The Matrix is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, it seems appropriate that now comes word that Keanu Reeves — as well as costar Carrie-Anne Moss — will reprise their respective roles of Neo and Trinity in a new chapter of the saga.

This film will be written and directed by one-half of the team that launched the franchise in the first place, Lana Wachowski (the other being her sister Lilly Wachowski). One person particularly excited about this is Warner Bros’ Chairman Toby Emmerich, who enthuses in a statement, “We could not be more excited to be re-entering The Matrix with Lana. Lana is a true visionary — a singular and original creative filmmaker — and we are thrilled that she is writing, directing and producing this new chapter in The Matrix universe.”

And they’re thrilled with good reason, especially when you consider how much of a phenomenon the original film and its sequels were at the time. In what became a trilogy, Neo leads a group of humans in a battle to free humanity from the enslavement of an artificial intelligence and the creation of that virtual world revolutionized movie visual effects.

In an interview with EmpireOnline.com back in 1999 Keanu explained why he was drawn to the project: “It was the script; the writing first of all. The way that the characters speak and what they say. I loved the dialogue and the ideas in the piece. I was really struck by the storytelling. [Screenwriters/directors Lana and Lilly] found a way in a kind of linear journey to tell a non-linear story. It wasn’t what I call a ‘climbing a mountain’ thing, you know? There’s the mountain and we’re going to climb the mountain. And then we have the trials of climbing the mountain.”

The Matrix grossed $463 million, The Matrix Reloaded (May 2003) pulled in $742 million and the final (or so we thought) chapter, The Matrix Revolutions (November 2003), made $427 million.

No word on when the new installment will go into production.