The Matrix Resurrections will reunite several cast members from the original trilogy when it arrives this winter. However, one of the more noticeable absences is Lilly Wachowski, who wrote and directed the first three films with her sister, Lana. Now, we finally know why Lana is flying solo on the series’ next installment.
Lilly (via The Wrap) recently appeared during a TCA panel to plug the second season of her Showtime series, Work in Progress, which premiered earlier this week. When asked about Resurrections, she explained that she was feeling “exhausted” due to the lack of breaks between her recent filmmaking endeavors, which included Cloud Atlas, Jupiter Ascending, and the first season of Netflix’s Sense8, all of which she worked on with Lana. So the idea of taking on a project as big as another Matrix movie seemed like too much pressure at the time. Moreover, this sense of burnout also kept her from working on Sense8’s second season.
“My world was like falling apart, to some extent,” said Lilly. “Even while I was like, you know, cracking out of my egg. So I needed this time away from this industry. I needed to, like, reconnect to myself as an artist. And I did that by going back to school and painting and stuff. And I made that decision. So I started painting that summer with my mom and then Lana got the call from Netflix that they wanted to order up another season. And I said, ‘I can’t do it. I don’t want to do it.’”
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Lilly also shared that Lana cracked the story for Resurrections in between their parents’ deaths, which also played a role in her decision to bow out of the sequel. Specifically, she felt a compelling desire to push forward with new ideas rather than revisit old ones.
“There was something about the idea of going backwards and being a part of something that I had done before that was expressly unappealing,” added Lilly. “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 on December 22.
What do you make of Lilly’s reason for stepping away from the franchise? Tell us what you think in the comment section below!
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