Lana will enroll at Bard and Lilly at Emerson, but both will drop out after a couple of years. In high school, they had worked behind the scenes on school plays and saved for college by starting a house-painting business. Young High School, a magnet school whose alums include Michelle Obama, Craig Robinson, and Vic Mensa. Lana and Lilly graduate, respectively, from Chicago’s Whitney M. Their early efforts include a radio play inspired by The Shadow and High Adventure, a game influenced by their passion for Dungeons & Dragons. Raised in the South Chicago neighborhood of Beverly, the siblings start creating together at an early age. Lana (formerly Larry) Wachowski and Lilly (formerly Andy) Wachowski are, respectively, born in Chicago. As we approach the film’s 20th anniversary, here’s a timeline of how The Matrix came to be, and what happened next. hadn’t done the studio equivalent of taking the red pill and seeing what happened, it might not have happened at all. In fact, if the stars didn’t align just right, and Warner Bros.

What first caught filmgoers’ attention via a weird-looking trailer in which Keanu Reeves dodged a bunch of bullets in slow-motion would soon become a pop-culture phenomenon that would inspire sequels and spinoffs and launch the careers of a pair of sibling filmmakers previously best known for one acclaimed low-budget crime movie. Would critics get it? Would audiences even show up? The answers were yes (mostly) and yes (decidedly). Though made for a (relatively) big budget by a major studio and starring a recognizable name, The Matrix arrived as an unknown quantity in the spring of 1999.

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