Lilly Wachowski Is ‘Kinda Done’ With The Matrix — But Matrix 5 Needs Her Blessing

More than 27 years after Neo took the red pill, one of the two architects of the Matrix has finally unplugged. Lilly Wachowski — who created the franchise alongside her sister Lana — says she’s “kinda done” with the world she built, even as Warner Bros. pushes ahead with a fifth film from The Martian writer Drew Goddard. But here’s the twist: that movie reportedly won’t happen without the Wachowskis’ blessing, and even Lilly admits she and Lana might “stick our noses in a tiny bit” before deciding what to do.

The Unplug

Speaking to KCRW’s The Business, Lilly ended any speculation that she’d ever return to the director’s chair for a fifth Matrix movie. “Warner Bros., they wanna make another thing. They’re always gonna wanna make another thing,” she said. “Personally, I don’t wanna play in that sandbox anymore. I’m kinda done.”

That’s about as final as it gets — at least on the surface. But then came the complicated part. Project in the works at the studio is a new Matrix film from Drew Goddard, and according to Lilly, Goddard “doesn’t wanna go forward unless he gets our blessing.” So the sisters are weighing whether to hand over their creation to a new custodian. “Maybe we’re gonna stick our noses in a tiny bit and see how we feel, and if we wanna pass on our blessing to Drew or not,” she said. “So, it could be something that’s coming down the road, but it’s still unknown.”

A Franchise Born in 1999

It’s hard to overstate what The Matrix meant when it landed in 1999. The Wachowskis’ bullet-dodging, code-raining, red-pill-vs-blue-pill fever dream didn’t just launch Keanu Reeves into the stratosphere — it rewired how action movies looked, how studios marketed blockbusters, and how a generation talked about simulated reality. It won four Academy Awards and turned “The One” into shorthand for the chosen one everywhere.

Lilly and Lana followed it with two back-to-back sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, both released in 2003, and the trilogy cemented itself as one of the defining franchises of the 2000s. For years, the sisters were inseparable as a filmmaking unit, signing off on Cloud Atlas, Jupiter Ascending, Speed Racer, and the Netflix series Sense8 — ambitious, sprawling, sometimes messy, and never boring.

Two Sisters, Two Paths

The franchise’s last chapter, though, was already a solo mission. Lilly stepped back from Sense8 partway through its run, and Lana directed The Matrix Resurrections — the 2021 sequel that brought Neo and Trinity back — on her own. Resurrections was a bold, meta, deliberately weird swing that cost around $190 million and tanked at the box office even as it picked up a cult following for its audacity.

Meanwhile, Lilly has been chasing a much smaller, much more personal project. She’s spent years trying to finance The Hunted, a $10 million dystopian political thriller with a “wall-to-wall trans cast” — and she’s been remarkably open about how hard Hollywood has made it. Earlier this year she told trade outlets that studios simply won’t back the film because of its cast. It’s a striking contrast: the woman who helped invent one of cinema’s most profitable universes can’t get ten million dollars to tell her own story. That context makes “I’m kinda done” land with a little more weight.

Meet the New Architect

So who inherits the franchise? Drew Goddard is one of the most respected writers in the business — he wrote the Oscar-nominated script for The Martian, adapted Project Hail Mary, co-wrote Cloverfield, and earned a reputation for smart, structurally airtight scripts. As a director, his The Cabin in the Woods became a horror cult classic, and Bad Times at the El Royale showed he can juggle ensemble thrillers with style.

Warner Bros. confirmed the fifth Matrix film was in the works back in April 2024, with Goddard attached to write, direct, and produce. It would be the first Matrix movie made without a Wachowski in the director’s chair. Since then, updates have been slow and careful — he’s still writing, has refused to confirm whether Keanu Reeves will return, and has said he needs “space to find the best story.” He’s also said he takes the responsibility “very seriously,” which checks out, because handing over John Wick‘s Keanu Reeves to a new creative team is the kind of move that gets a filmmaker eviscerated online if it goes wrong.

Where Matrix 5 Stands Right Now

So, the state of play: Warner Bros. wants a fifth Matrix movie and has a director it trusts. The Wachowskis are no longer a package deal — Lana exec-produced the new project when it was announced, while Lilly has publicly exited the sandbox. Goddard won’t proceed without the sisters’ blessing. And the sisters haven’t decided whether to give it. There’s no release date, no confirmed cast, and no guarantee Keanu Reeves suits back up as Neo.

That last part is the question fans keep circling. Reeves has publicly said he’d love to return to the role if the story is right, and Matrix without Neo feels like a lighthouse without its beam. But Goddard’s whole approach — slow writing process, no casting promises, “space to find the best story” — suggests he isn’t rushing anything.

There’s also a case that the timing, at least thematically, has never been better. The Matrix arrived in 1999 as a paranoid tech fable about machines trapping humanity in a simulated world. Twenty-seven years on, that premise doesn’t feel like science fiction anymore — it feels like a Tuesday. Generative AI can now produce fake video, synthetic voices, and entire virtual worlds that are nearly indistinguishable from reality, and the very phrase “red pill” has been co-opted and twisted by online culture wars. A new Matrix made with modern eyes could have an enormous amount to say about surveillance, algorithmic feeds, deepfakes, and the way we already live half our lives inside constructed realities. Whether that’s Goddard’s take remains to be seen — but the raw material is richer than it’s ever been.

The Bottom Line

For now, the future of the Matrix lives or dies on one question: do Lana and Lilly Wachowski hand over the keys? Lilly has made her position clear — she’s done playing in that sandbox. But done with the franchise isn’t quite the same as done with the decision, and her own words leave the door even slightly ajar.

Would you watch a Matrix movie made by Drew Goddard without the Wachowskis’ involvement — or does the franchise need its creators to approve the handoff first? Sound off below.