Writer Zak Penn, who is currently doing the press rounds because of his involvement in Ready Player One, has offered a somewhat vague update on the status of his The Matrix movie project.

The exact nature of Penn’s The Matrix plan remains unclear. He previously shunned the use of the term ‘reboot’ in relation to the project, preferring to stress that ‘more stories set in the universe of The Matrix’ is what he is hoping to deliver.

Penn – who has The Avengers and X-Men 2 on his CV – has given this update:

“I’ve been working on Matrix right now. Which is in…a phase right now. That’s a franchise I desperately want to see brought back and, I can’t go in to too much detail, but I’ve been harassing Warner Bros. for years to try to get it going again so that’s one thing I’m working on and I’ve been working on a bunch of other things too.”

He also made a comparison between The Matrix and Ready Player One:

“I think OASIS (the interconnected virtual space in Ready Player One) is similar, both the Matrix and OASIS are similar in that they are brilliant ideas for universes. And they are not, you know, when it came out about Matrix, people were like ‘Oh no, there going to reboot Matrix’ I was like, Why, I’m not insane. I mean, the Matrix is still one of my favorite…they’d re-release The Matrix and people would go see it.”

Clearly, Penn has a lot of passion for The Matrix franchise. It sounds like his movie set in the universe of The Matrix is still in the early stages of development, but we’re intrigued to find out more about it. It’s unclear what the “phase” that Penn referred to is, but we’re hoping that it doesn’t hold him up for too long.

Some may shun the idea of a Matrix movie being made without the original filmmakers, the Wachowski siblings. But Penn has passion for the franchise and pedigree in this genre, so let’s not rule out the possibility that this could be something special.

More as we hear it.

ScreenRant / Zak Penn on Twitter