Among the many new faces that will be seen in the upcoming The Matrix 4, whose title may have been revealed in an unlikely way, will be none other than Neil Patrick Harris. It’s unclear what role Harris will take on in the sequel, be it a resistance fighter or perhaps an Agent, but in a new interview Harris has revealed what it was like to be on the set of the movie with some surprising news. Speaking with Variety, Harris opened up about the way that director Lana Wachowski operated on the set and how it bucked the conventional means of filming a huge studio blockbusters.
“It didn’t feel large because it felt like she was in her sweet spot, which was filming on the fly, filming using natural light,” Harris said. “Sometimes you’d sit around for an hour waiting for the clouds to clear, and then you’d quickly film. You’d film pages at a time in 30 minutes and then be done… You would think that a giant movie would be 100% storyboarded, animatics, and we’d be checking off shots. I think she lived that before three times over, and I would suspect that she wants to do things her own way now. It wasn’t often that you felt that you were doing something gigantic because she made it feel very intimate.”
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Harris joins an impressive roster of newcomers that will appear in the upcoming film which also includes Aquaman and Candyman star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, plus Iron Fist alum Jessica Henick, Mindhunter‘s Jonathan Groff, Quantico’s Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and iZombie‘s Andrew Caldwell. Wachowski also enlisted a number of former cast members from their hit Netflix series Sense8 including Eréndira Ibarra, Max Riemelt, Brian J. Smith and Toby Onwumere.
It’s not just new faces though as the film will see the return of characters from the original films though. Franchise veterans Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Ann Moss who will return as their characters Neo and Trinity, respectively, but considering they both died in 2003’s The Matrix Revolutions it’s unclear HOW they’ll come back. Other cast members from the original three films reportedly returning include Jada Pinkett Smith as Niobe and actor Lambert Wilson as The Merovingian aka The Frenchman, one of the most peculiar additions to the sequels.
Production on the film was previously shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic and as a result has had its release date shifted multiple times. Originally scheduled to premiere on May 21 of this year, later moving to April 1, 2022, and now scheduled to premiere in theaters and on HBO Max on December 22, 2021.
