Village Roadshow Entertainment has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection

Yeah, there's a bunch of reasons Hollywood is notoriously known for "Development Hell" as its longest phase in the creative process. Production is generally "quick" and has a lot known knowns. Development is a lot of gossip and paperwork and contracts and writes and rewrites and license agreements and market studies and so forth, sometimes "forever" even for projects "everyone" thinks should be an easy thing to kick off and wants to see on some screen.

How much did they gross from streaming it?

The proximate cause seems to be a $100M claim from WB against VREG regarding additional finance costs for matrix revolutions circa 2021. VREGs counter(?) suit was recently kicked back and told to go to arbitration. VREG also claims to have spent $19M pursuing their legal claims/response so far. My read is legal costs + no productions in the pipeline + no recent profitable activity + a likely ~$100M arbitration result is exactly whats led to bankruptcy.

I still like the characters that Spacey portrayed. I admire his work I don’t admire him as a person.

Who are you responding to? Cause it’s not my comment.

The storyline (immediately) continued and deepened in The Matrix Online and some of us did hope for a revival of The Matrix Online, given most people missed playing through that story, with a better budget and a goal to finish its planned storyline.

Matrix 4 was interesting in that it seemed to leave The Matrix Online canon (the Wachowskis seem earnest in trusting there cross-media plays in the franchise to be/remain canon) but didn't answer some of the old questions. On the other hand it did deliver a few nice things.

But yes a Warner Brothers execute hoping to boot up a Matrix branded money printer would not have had the sense to talk to anyone previously involved in The Matrix Online, despite owning Monolith (RIP), Matrix 4 was never really about continuing the story to the people demanding "we need a Matrix 4 by such and such quarter".

Not really (except hardcore fans, who already followed the 'after-trilogy' lore, and would have been happy with a continuation in a much cheaper format)

But Warner Brothers itself wanted a big tentpole release, and insisted Matrix be it. (Even though it wouldn't really fit that mold)

The Matrix 4 itself, even mentions how the demands on the release were ridiculous and wouldn't work (it's not 1999 anymore, you can't just re-do 1999 and expect it to work).

The Matrix 4 film itself is really good (IMHO), as a huge fan of the original stories and lore, it moves the universe forward in a way that feels authentic to the original trilogy, it reunites old characters, makes charming and thoughtful new ones, and it remains authentic and true to the original romance underpinning the whole thing. The lack of Hugo Weaving/Laurence Fishburne, and a little bit of dated action fights is the only real bummer I can think of.

The problem is that the film is only good, and not mind-crushingly great. And what everyone seemed to want out of this, was a guaranteed 300+ mil smash hit at box.

If they had released it to theaters, I don't think it would have made that. But it 'only' cost $190 million to make (Matrix 2 was 265m in 2024 dollars), and I think Matrix 4 would have done at least $200 mil total at box, if it had a theatrical release (for comparison, The Marvels is another 'good-but-not-great' SciFi action film, and grossed $206 million at box).

We demand proof of mental health

You do know that Lana Wachowski intentionally made it as bad as possible to tank the franchise cause she was forced to make the movie or the studio would get someone else to direct it right?

Matrix Resurrections had a super trippy premise, which was in line with the original film. The first half of the movie was momentously expectation-breaking mind fuckery, and I immensely enjoyed it. (I wish I had shut the film off after the reveal.)

The action sequences and set pieces were absolutely lackluster and downright boring despite the film's budget. (Not sure if this is due to the age of the actors - the John Wick series seems to have figured this out just fine.)

Most damning of all, the story arc, character arcs, and final resolution were phoned in and utterly forgettable. It's tragic, given the ludicrously audacious start of the film. The setup was there, but there was no investment beyond the trick premise.

Lana swung for the fences but struck out. It felt like an M. Night Shyamalan letdown.

Same here

Better to keep living like they only made 3 Matrix films :)

Watch the first half of it, then turn it off.

If you like late 90's / early 2000's M. Night Shyamalan, the first half of the film is brilliant. But after the reveal it falls apart like the last season of Game of Thrones. It's as if Lana stopped caring.

It would have been fantastic to have timed it with the release of the Matrix MMO game. It's as if that had been the plan all along.

Folie à Deux was a great name though. Not defending the movie but as a title for a Joker & Harley movie it works.

The mid market film has died thanks to Disney monopolizing the box office with their tent poles. (Though this is questionable hypothesis and more of a complaint about Marvelization.)

The healthy revenue from long box office legs and DVD sales has died thanks to streaming. And the youth that would rather get their dopamine fix elsewhere.

But the streaming wars have done incredible damage to this once thriving industry.

Amazon and Apple have come in and subsided their own studios from unrelated business units. (Where is antitrust?) They're teaching consumers that the price of movies is free.