The Matrix 4 may be happening with Keanu Reeves, Carrie -Anne Moss, and a couple others returning from the original trilogy, but some essential actors/characters are not. For some reason or another, Laurence Fishburne has confirmed he was not asked back, which is odd because Morpheus was the only character who actually survived the original trilogy while Neo and Trinity supposedly had perished. And now, adding to that, it's been confirmed by Hugo Weaving that Agent Smith was originally going to appear but negotiations broke down with the film's director Lana Wachowski. Weaving himself confirmed this in a recent interview with Coming Soon in which he described how that break down happened:
“I thought we could have done my scenes in May, June and July; and we talked about money and we talked about — they were negotiating. And we were all pretty much sorted and agreed on dates and it was all fine, but then Lana decided she didn’t think it was going to work. So, she pulled the plug on the negotiations. That’s where it ended up. She basically didn’t feel that my commitment to the National Theatre was going to fit in with the dates that she had in mind for me.”
It is fascinating how a character was set to return and, without Weaving, apparently another character like Smith will be so easily inserted (So it would seem). And while we probably would have found out by the end of this year (With the film originally set to be released on May 21st, 2021), due to the COVID-19 pandemic we won't know for sure till the end of next year due to the film's release date now being April 1, 2022. With filming having just recommenced in the middle of August (And expected to continue on for another two to three months), it's a wonder what the plan is for the belated sequel to the original trilogy of films.
The Matrix 4 co-stars Jada Pinkett Smith and Lambert Wilson
Smart move. He probably saw the last two films.