Will Smith’s Radically Regretful Rejection of ‘The Matrix’

Many actors reject a movie throughout their careers and later regret it, but there are few cases as radical as that of Will Smith with ‘Matrix’. And it is that the actor said not to give life to Neo to make instead one of the biggest failures in the history of science fiction cinema that he himself also considers his worst film.

It all goes back to 1996, which is when Smith had a run-in with the Wachowskibut he didn’t quite understand the idea that was presented to him, so he opted for what seemed like a surefire success by working with the director again. Barry Sonnenfeld. After all, ‘Men in Black’ had swept the box office and in ‘Wild Wild West’ they had one of the biggest budgets in history at their disposal at the time.

The advice you would give yourself

It is true that Smith himself has admitted on occasion that he might have killed ‘The Matrix’ if he had agreed to be its protagonist, but he has also regretted on more than one occasion having refused to be Neo. Perhaps the most eloquent time was when the protagonist of ‘I am Legend 2’ was in the middle of a promotional campaign for ‘Geminis’, ultimately the biggest failure of his career, when he was asked What advice would you give yourself if you could time travel to another point in your career?:

I’d go back to ‘Wild Wild West’ and say, “Why didn’t you do ‘The Matrix,’ you asshole?”

When he visited the program Stephen Colbert In 2019, he also referred to this issue in a somewhat more polite way, saying that “I would say to myself: “Man, don’t do ‘Wild Wild West’. She would say, “Dude, do Neo, do Neo!” Because they offered me ‘Matrix’“It is clear that it is still a thorn in the side for him.

The truth is that Smith would most likely regret ‘Wild Wild West’ even if ‘The Matrix’ simply didn’t exist, since it was a resounding failure, raising 221 million dollars when it had cost 170 million, although there are sources that raise that figure to 241 million. But it is that if we add that ‘Matrix’ destroyed the box office with a worldwide collection of 467 million when its budget was barely 63 million, things get even worse.

In Espinof | All The Matrix Movies Ranked From Worst To Best