The Matrix Resurrections will bring back both Keanu Reeves as Neo and Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity, this we have known for some time. What we don't know is, why now? Well, returning director Lana Wachowski has now offered some deeply personal insight into why she felt the desire to bring these beloved sci-fi heroes back to the big screen, and it is for a reason most will understand: grief.

"My dad died, then this friend died, then my mom died. I didn't really know how to process that kind of grief. I hadn't experienced it that closely ... You know their lives are going to end and yet it was still really hard. My brain has always reached into my imagination and one night, I was crying and I couldn't sleep, and my brain exploded this whole story. And I couldn't have my mom and dad, yet suddenly I had Neo and Trinity, arguably the two most important characters in my life. It was immediately comforting to have these two characters alive again, and it's super simple. You can look at it and say: 'ok, these two people die and ok, bring these two people back to life and oh, doesn't that feel good.' Yeah, it did! It's simple, and this is what art does and that's what stories do, they comfort us."

Following the death of her parents, Wachowski was able to use the world of The Matrix to achieve something that she couldn't in real-life, resurrection. The filmmaker ultimately decided to bring back both Neo and Trinity as a way to attain some kind of comfort, and no doubt this is how many will feel seeing the two characters on screen once again after all these years.

As teased in the newly released trailer, The Matrix Resurrections is a continuation of the story established in the first The Matrix. It reunites Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss as cinematic icons Neo & Trinity in an expansion of their story that ventures back into the Matrix and even deeper down the rabbit hole. A mind-bending new adventure with action and epic scale, it's set in a familiar yet even more provocative world where reality is more subjective than ever and all that's required to see the truth is to free your mind.

The Matrix Resurrections has amassed a stellar cast alongside Abdul-Mateen, Reeves and Moss, Neil Patrick Harris, Priyanka Chopra, Jessica Henwick, Jonathan Groff, Toby Onwumere, Max Riemelt, Eréndira Ibarra, Andrew Caldwell, Brian J. Smith, Ellen Hollman, and Christina Ricci, who was recently announced to be joining the highly anticipated project. Jada Pinkett Smith and Lambert Wilson also return, and will reprise their respective roles from previous trilogy.

The fourth movie in The Matrix franchise is a joint production by Village Roadshow Pictures and Venus Castina Productions and is scheduled to be released by Warner Bros. Pictures theatrically on December 22, 2021. The movie will also stream digitally on the ad-free tier of HBO Max in the United States for a month beginning on that same date. Lana Wachowski made this revelation while speaking at the International Literature Festival Berlin.