It’s now over 20 years since The Matrix amazed everything and influenced so many films afterwards that it was a surprise that Jane Austen adaptations didn’t have that bullet time effect somewhere in it. As the Wachowksi’s have not had a film with anywhere near the success of the 3 Matrix films we now have The Matrix 4 about to go into production as we predicted HERE. With Keanu returning there’s now talk of Matrix 4 Agent Smith played by Hugo Weaving.
The bad news is that Hugo Weaving has said that Matrix 4 Agent Smith will not be appearing. Lana Wachowski who will be directing Matrix 4 has Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Jada Pinkett Smith reprising their roles from the original as will Jessica Henwick, Neil Patrick Harris, Toby Onwumere, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II.
Whilst being interviewed about the stage play “The Visit” at London’s National Theatre which runs from January 31st to May 13th and its those dates that have caused the problem.
“It’s unfortunate but actually, I had this offer [for The Visit] and then the offer came from The Matrix, so I knew it was happening but I didn’t have dates. I thought [I] could do both and it took eight weeks to work out that the dates would work – I held off on accepting [a role in The Visit during that time]. I was in touch with [director] Lana Wachowski, but in the end, she decided that the dates weren’t going to work. So we’d sorted the dates and then she sort of changed her mind. They’re pushing on ahead without me.”
So Matrix 4 Agent Smith is out.
In the same interview when asked about his appearance in “Captain America: The First Avenger” as villain Red Skull character as in “Avengers: Infinity War,” the role was taken over by Ross Marquand. It was thought that Weaving declined to return because he wasn’t interested but he says it was a failure of negotiations that left him out and that he would have done the role:
“I loved playing that character Red Skull – it was a lot of fun. We were all obliged to sign up for three pictures: I was thinking [Red Skull] probably wouldn’t come back in Captain America but he may well come back as a villain in The Avengers. By then, they’d pushed back on the contracts that we agreed on and so the money they offered me for The Avengers was much less than I got for the very first one, and this was for two films. And the promise when we first signed the contracts was that the money would grow each time.They said: ‘It’s just a voice job, it’s not a big deal.’ I actually found negotiating with them through my agent impossible. And I didn’t really wanna do it that much. But I would have done it.”
source: Time Out
