Although it made a sense at the time, Warner Bros.’ lockdown-era decision to push all of its major blockbusters into simultaneous release on its HBO Max streaming platform continues to feel like the movie studio equivalent of a 28-year-old man deciding it’s time to finally grow a mustache—eye-catching, optically questionable, and ultimately disastrous to their relationships with others. We’ve long documented how the studio’s treatment of Tenet led it to lose the support of seeming diehard loyalist Christopher Nolan, costing it those big Oppenheimer bucks, to say nothing of however much money The Odyssey is going to rake in for Universal this year. But it’s also the direct cause of its divorce from—to say nothing of the large-scale dissolution of—its old buddies at film financier Village Roadshow, which culminated this week in the final settling of a big fight over 2021’s The Matrix Resurrections.
You may not remember this—if we’re being honest, we don’t remember a ton of 2021 or the fourth Matrix movie—but Lana Wachowski’s messy return to the franchise was the final movie to get the simultaneous release strategy back in that sourdough-laden year, with Warner Bros. pushing the film’s release to the Christmas season, up from April of 2022. Allegedly, according to a lawsuit Village Roadshow launched at the time, in an effort to get a few more HBO Max subscriptions on the books before the year was out. The long-running film backer was already in legal conflict with Warner Bros. at that point, since it had allegedly refused to pay what it had pledged to for the fourth Matrix film—arguing that Warner Bros. had sacrificed the film’s potential box office take (which VR would get a cut of) in favor of its streaming subscriptions (which the financier wouldn’t). Roadshow, which was a producer on every Matrix movie since the first one, argued that Warner Bros. had essentially shivved the whole franchise to prop up its fledgling streaming service, arguing that “There can be no doubt that the abysmal theatrical box office sales figures from The Matrix Resurrections dilute the value of this tent pole franchise as a film’s lack of profitability generally prevents studios from investing in additional sequels and derivative films in the near term.” (Your opinions about which aspects of Resurrections diluted the franchise’s overall value will, of course, vary.)
Besides making a lot of headlines, the lawsuit—which quickly went into an arbitration that led to Village Roadshow filing for bankruptcy—also destroyed the relationship between the studio and the financier. (Which was also refusing at that point to pay for other movies it was on the hook for, like 2023’s Wonka.) Village Roadshow executives have claimed that Warner Bros. iced it out from participating in sequels and remakes it owned the rights to, like Wonka, Joker, and I Am Legend, while Warner Bros. reportedly tried to (unsuccessfully) pick those derivative rights up for itself in the financier’s Chapter 11 fire sale. Per THR, the whole ugly situation finally came to a close this week, as Village Roadshow reportedly acceded to demands that it give Warner Bros. $57 million—now framed as damages, not an ownership stake—while also giving up any claims to ownership over Resurrections. Which is, in technical terms, a win for Warner Bros., albeit one that nuked one of its longest Hollywood relationships in the process. And all on behalf of a streaming service they can’t even seem to settle on a name for.
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