There was much excitement amongst fans of The Matrix films when The Matrix Resurrections was announced. The movie saw the return of Lana Wachowski at the helm again from the Wachowski pair, with Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss reprising their roles in the lead. Returning after 22 years following the first film, the movie had expectations and this definitely meant that it would have seen a massive box-office response. But that was not the case as the movie failed to recapture the box office magic of the original trilogy by becoming an unmitigated box office failure. So far, it has only made just $106 million worldwide, and $31 million of that is from the domestic market. Its production budget was $190 million. So, even if the movie had been beneficial for HBO Max by pulling in new subs, it is still a massive failure for WB. Let’s take a look at some major reasons why The Matrix 4 bombed.
Heavy Competition
The movie was released at heavy competition with some major projects being released at that time. We saw Spider-Man: No Way Home which was a massive success and kept bringing people back to the halls and made it the most successful Sony movie ever. Not only that but there was stiff competition from The King’s Man which was a prequel to the Matthew Vaughn helmed Kingsman franchise. Sing 2 actually soared high following its release as The Matrix Resurrections continued bombing. The studios should have worked out better release dates for the movie as this was period actually some major players returned to the big screen.
HBO Max Release
2020 saw some of the major studios making ways to release the projects that would help them earn while not putting the audience in cinema halls. HBO Max, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and some of the other major streaming platforms became the home for these projects. Warner Bros. actually made a deal with HBO Max that allowed the movies to have a release on the streaming platform on the day of the theater release. With the return of the people to the cinema halls, the studio should have dropped this deal and headed only for a theater release. This allowed people who aren’t interested in going to the cinema halls to stay at home and watch it at their own leisure.
Piracy
Recently it was revealed that the online release for Black Widow saw a $600 million loss for Disney. But since then Disney has changed the rules for the release of the movies but the same cannot be said for the other studios. Releasing the movie simultaneously with the theater release on the streaming platform actually enables the availability of the movie in good quality and various languages. Once someone says something about the movie, people would hardly feel like spending money on the movie and this would lead to it being watched online. People who haven’t even subscribed to the streaming platform would be able to watch the movie without any issue.
The Hype DiedÂ
Keanu Reeves became quite the pop culture phenomenon in 2019 and it was during the height of this that the movie was announced. It was actually supposed to have a comparatively early release but COVID-19 led to multiple delays for the project. Till then the hype for the movie had almost died as there was much interest in other massive cinematic events like Spider-Man: No Way Home. Some fans even felt like the movie wasn’t required and it was going to be a disappointment which actually ended up being true.
Not Much To Offer
The Matrix: Resurrections didn’t actually live up to the expectations and it hardly had anything to offer. Every past film in the series is known for the wonderfully executed fight sequences and none of this was actually seen in this one. The plot focused too much on making reference to the events of the past and trying to be self-aware but this ruined the narrative. Even the characters weren’t given much to do and this has to be one of the less eventful movies in the series.
Do you think The Matrix 4 deserved this? Or was WB careless about releasing it? Let us know in the comments.
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