Lilly Wachowski Still Holds the Blessing Matrix 5 Needs

Lilly Wachowski told KCRW on September 4 that Drew Goddard will not make Matrix 5 without her blessing, even though she is done with the franchise. Warner Bros. still wants another film. She has not joined it, and she has not blessed it.

Goddard came to the studio with his own idea in 2024. Lana Wachowski is already listed as an executive producer. The extra pause sits with the sister who left.

Lilly Told KCRW She Is Kind of Done

The comments came during a Bound anniversary interview on KCRW, hosted by Kim Masters on The Business. The episode aired September 4, built around 30 years of Bound, the 1996 noir the sisters directed before The Matrix. Matrix 5 was not the subject. It came up anyway.

Warner Bros., they wanna make another thing. They’re always gonna wanna make another thing. Personally, I don’t wanna play in that sandbox anymore. I’m kinda done.

Lilly Wachowski, on KCRW’s The Business

She did not close the door on looking. Goddard, she said, does not want to go forward unless he gets “our blessing,” meaning hers and Lana’s. That, she called a complicated situation.

“Maybe we’re gonna stick our noses in a tiny bit and see how we feel, and if we wanna pass on our blessing to Drew or not,” she said. “So, it could be something that’s coming down the road, but it’s still unknown.”

That is not a yes. It is not a writing credit. It is a maybe from someone who has already said she does not want the job.

She Already Refused to Walk Old Paths

Lilly sat out The Matrix Resurrections in 2021. Lana directed that film alone, with David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon as co-writers. On a Television Critics Association panel that August, Lilly was asked why she stayed away. She called it a tough one.

She had come out of her transition exhausted after Cloud Atlas, Jupiter Ascending, and the first season of Sense8, three projects she described as 100-plus days of shooting each, posted and prepped on top of one another. She said her world was falling apart even while she was “cracking out of my egg.” She went back to school and to painting. She told Netflix she could not do Sense8 season two.

Lana’s idea for another Matrix film arrived between their father’s death and their mother’s death, which Lilly said were five weeks apart. “There was something about the idea of going backward and being a part of something that I had done before that was expressly unappealing,” she said. She did not want to live in “these old shoes.” Lana made the fourth film for different reasons, she added. She would not speak for her sister.

Asked then if they might work together again, she said, “Who knows? Who knows? Maybe.” Five years later, the maybe is a blessing, not a chair on set.

Bound is still the film she uses to talk about that early self. In Chicago last year she said the first shot of Bound is a closet, and that the movie was two closeted trans women trying to work something out. Matrix 5 would send her back into a world she already declined to re-enter after that upheaval.

On August 7, the same KCRW series ran the first half of her visit, about Anarchists United, the artist-owned nonprofit studio she is trying to stand up as a kind of new United Artists. She is not idle while Warner asks for more Matrix. She is building a room that is not that sandbox.

The Brake Goddard Put on Himself

Warner Bros. Pictures announced the fifth film on April 3, 2024. Goddard would write, direct, and produce. Sarah Esberg would produce with him through Goddard Textiles. Lana would executive produce. It would be the first Matrix movie without Lana or Lilly in the director’s chair.

Jesse Ehrman, then Warner Bros. Motion Pictures president of production, said Goddard came to the studio “with a new idea.” The studio, Ehrman said, believed it would honor “what Lana and Lilly began over 25 years ago” and still offer Goddard’s own view of the series. Goddard’s own statement that day was almost a vow.

It is not hyperbole to say The Matrix films changed both cinema and my life. Lana and Lilly’s exquisite artistry inspires me on a daily basis, and I am beyond grateful for the chance to tell stories in their world.

Drew Goddard, April 3, 2024

He is the Oscar-nominated writer of The Martian, the writer-director of The Cabin in the Woods, and the writer of 2026’s Project Hail Mary. He did not have to treat the sisters as a second studio. He has.

After nearly two years of public silence, some people had already written the film off. In early 2026, promoting Hail Mary, Goddard said it was still in the works. “I’m in my writing cave writing,” he said. “I don’t know how long I’ll be in that writing cave, but whenever I come out, I’ll have news to share.” He also said he felt “the weight of wanting to do right by the fans, wanting to do right by the creators and wanting to do right for myself as a fan.”

Pressed on Keanu Reeves, he said, “I can’t speak to that.” The blessing Lilly described in September is the same caution, aimed at the people who built the world rather than the actor who filled it. Warner can replace a director. It cannot replace this director’s self-imposed rule without replacing him.

$190 Million In, $160.2 Million Back

Warner’s hunger is not mysterious. The original film, released March 31, 1999, on a $65 million budget, took in $180.4 million in North America and $472.4 million worldwide, per The Numbers. Reloaded, on May 15, 2003, remains the peak: $281.6 million domestic and $738.6 million worldwide against $150 million. Revolutions followed that November, $139.3 million domestic and $427.3 million worldwide, also on $150 million.

Resurrections, released in the United States on December 22, 2021, as a theatrical and streaming split right after the pandemic, did not come close. The Numbers puts the production budget at $190 million, the domestic gross at $40.5 million, the opening at $10.7 million, and the worldwide total at $160.2 million.

THE MATRIX FILMS, BY THE NUMBERS

That Matrix franchise box office history is why a studio that “always” wants another thing still wants this one, and why a fourth film that missed its budget makes the fifth film harder to rush. Reviews were split on the same line: Resurrections holds a 63 percent score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, and the same 63 percent from audiences.

Goddard’s pitch was supposed to be a new idea, not a repair job. Two years and five months after the announcement, he is still in the cave, and now he is waiting on a blessing from a filmmaker who has already said she does not want to play.

What a Blessing Would Change

Lana’s producer title is a studio credit. Lilly’s blessing is not. Goddard has attached his own progress to a feeling she has not promised to have. If she and Lana look at his pages and pass, he can leave the cave. If they do not, he has told her he does not want to go forward. That is a narrower bind than the one Screen-era franchise talk usually describes, because Warner is not the party that asked for the pause.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The ask: Goddard does not want to proceed without Lana and Lilly’s blessing, per Lilly on September 4.
• Her stance: She does not want to play in that sandbox and is kinda done, while leaving room to look at his work.
• The job: Goddard is attached to write, direct, and produce; Lana is attached as executive producer; Lilly has no announced credit.
• The date: Warner announced the film on April 3, 2024, with no public plot, cast, or release date since.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The pages: Whether the sisters have read a draft, and whether either will pass a blessing.
• The cast: Whether Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, or anyone from Resurrections returns.
• The fallback: Whether Warner would keep Goddard’s idea if he walked, or hire another director.

Online, the news mostly replayed the quotes, then slid off the film. The production question is simpler than the noise around it: Goddard has made Lilly’s comfort a condition of his own. Fans who still want Reeves in the coat treated that as another stall. The stall is real. The person who can end it is the one who already left.

Lana Is Already the Executive Producer

The sisters are not one switch. Lana came back for Resurrections. Lilly did not. Lana is on Matrix 5 as an executive producer. Lilly is on it only if Goddard waits for her to say yes. Treating “the Wachowskis” as a single gate hides that split, which is the whole delay.

WHO IS ON MATRIX 5 RIGHT NOW

• Drew Goddard: Writer, director, and producer, still in the writing cave as of early 2026, waiting on a blessing he asked for.
• Sarah Esberg: Producer through Goddard Textiles, named with him when Warner announced the film.
• Lana Wachowski: Executive producer, the only Wachowski with an announced job on the fifth film.
• Lilly Wachowski: No announced role; the person Goddard wants to bless the work, and the person who says she is kinda done.

If Warner’s aim was simply a Wachowski in the room, it already has one. Goddard’s aim, on his own telling, is to do right by both creators. That is why the sister who walked away can freeze the version of the movie that exists today without ever taking a producing title.

No Names Yet for Neo or Trinity

Reeves has not been confirmed. Moss has not been confirmed. Laurence Fishburne was not invited back for Resurrections. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jonathan Groff, Jessica Henwick, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and Neil Patrick Harris entered on that fourth film, and none of them has been named for the fifth. Goddard would not discuss the original cast in early 2026. Lilly did not discuss it in September either.

A blessing would not fill those parts. It would only tell Goddard he can keep writing in a world two other people invented, after one of them already declined to walk its old paths. She said they might stick their noses in a tiny bit and see how they feel. She also said the outcome is still unknown.

Until she passes that blessing, or withholds it, Matrix 5 stays where he left it: in the cave, with a studio that wants another thing and a co-creator who does not.