Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter to star onstage in WAITING FOR GODOT

Only very tangentially genre-related, but this seems like an outstanding bit of casting. Bill & Ted co-stars Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter are reuniting, this time onstage in a new production of Samuel Beckett's classic play Waiting for Godot. Reeves will play Estragon whilst Winter will play Vladimir.

The production will be directed by Jamie Lloyd and will hit Broadway in autumn 2025.

Reeves and Winter previously starred together in the three films of the Bill & Ted franchise: Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989), Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991) and Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020). They reprised the roles in the animated series Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventures (1990-91).

China Miéville completes 1,000-page new novel

Wired has published an interview with British genre author China Miéville about his upcoming collaboration with actor-musician-icon Keanu Reeves, but also touching on his other projects.

As related previously, Miéville has joined forces with Reeves to write The Book of Elsewhere, a tie-in novel to Reeves' BRZRKR comic book franchise. Miéville agreed to tackle the project because he thought it would be interesting to work within the constraints of someone else's fictional universe whilst also delivering a satisfying narrative. The novel will be published on 23 July this year.

However, Miéville fans frustrated with his lack of output in the last decade will be pleased to hear he has a new solo novel in the works as well, and not just in-progress but completed and sent to the publisher. Miéville's last novel was Railsea, published in 2012. He did publish two novellas, This Census-Taker and The Last Days of New Paris, in 2016, and a short story collection, Three Moments of an Explosion, in 2015. However, his fans have been crying out for a new solo novel.

Miéville doesn't reveal much about the new book but at over a thousand pages, it will be his longest book to date (and books like Perdito Street Station and The Scar are not exactly slight novels). Presumably it will be published in 2025, but hopefully we'll get more news soon.

Keanu Reeves and China Miéville to collaborate on new novel

Actor/icon Keanu Reeves is to co-write his first novel with British genre author China Miéville. The novel is called The Book of Elsewhere and is set in the BRZRKR universe co-created by Reeves for a comic series, which was published in 2021.

China Miéville is one of Britain's most acclaimed science fiction and fantasy authors. He began his career with King Rat in 1998 but made his name with Perdido Street Station (2000), the start of his loosely-connected Bas-Lag series (also comprising 2002's The Scar and 2004's Iron Council). His other works include the novels Un Lun Dun (2007), The City and The City (2009), Kraken (2011), Embassytown (2011), Railsea (2012) and the novellas The Tain (2002), This Census-Taker (2016) and The Last Days of New Paris (2016).

Miéville went on a hiatus from writing fiction to focus on academic work, writing October: The Story of the Russian Revolution (2017) and A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto (2022). The Book of Elsewhere will be his first published fiction in eight years and his first novel in twelve years. I don't think anyone would have bet money on his eagerly-awaited return to fiction being in the company of Keanu Reeves.

Reeves, obviously, is an acclaimed and iconic actor best-known for playing the titular character in the John Wick franchise (now at four films and a prequel TV show), Neo in the four Matrix movies and Johnny Silverhand in the video game Cyberpunk 2077 and its recent expansion, Phantom Liberty. BRZRKR is a 12-issue limited series focusing on an enigmatic warrior character called the Berzerker, who is immortal and fights his way across time. Reeves developed the title with Matt Kindt, with Ron Garney providing the artwork. 

The Book of Elsewhere will be published on 23 July this year. BRZRKR is also in development as a live-action Netflix project and an animated show.

CYBERPUNK 2077 live-action project in the planning stages

CD Projekt Red will collaborate with production company Anonymous Content to create a live-action project set in the world of their video game, Cyberpunk 2077. It is unclear if this is a direct adaptation of the game or an adjacent project in the same world, similar to 2022 anime spin-off series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, which was a hit for Netflix.

Anonymous Content worked on True Detective, Mr. Robot, The Revenant and Spotlight, and are known for serious, intense genre works, which would be a good fit for the Cyberpunk world.

Cyberpunk 2077 is based on the Cyberpunk role-playing game franchise created by Mike Pondsmith in the late 1980s (which had its heyday with the Cyberpunk 2020 product line, released through the 1990s). The video game, released in late 2020, sees the player taking on the role of V, a scrappy mercenary in Night City, California, who inadvertently ends up with a chip which could bring down entire global powers. To stop the chip's destruction, they install it into their cyberware, resulting in them being joined in their adventures by the apparent cyber-ghost of legendary rebel and rock star Johnny Silverhand (Keanu Reeves). The chip allows them to use more cyberware and powerful weapons than anybody else, but also will inevitably kill them, forcing them to make a hard choice on how to save Johnny, or themselves.

Despite a buggy and controversial launch, the game has undergone a redemption arc thanks to a steady bug-fixing schedule. The game has sold 25 million copies and recently launched its well-received Phantom Liberty expansion (starring Idris Elba as New United States secret agent Solomon Reed), which has sold 3 million copies in its first two weeks on sale.

Video game adaptations used to be seen as a poisoned chalice, but recent successes like The Last of Us and Arcane have seen the idea become more popular.

With this idea only just getting off the ground and Hollywood still wrapping up the issues surrounding its recent strike, it'll likely be a good few years before we see this project hit the screen. Meanwhile, CD Projekt Red have already started development on Cyberpunk 2077's sequel.

Warner Brothers drops enigmatic trailer for THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS

As promised a couple of days back, Warner Brothers have dropped the trailer for The Matrix Resurrections, the fourth film in the Matrix franchises and the first new film entry to the series since 2003's The Matrix Revolutions.

The trailer opens with Neil Patrick Harris, apparently playing a psychiatrist, seeing his patient Thomas Anderson, played once again by Keanu Reeves. Reeves apparently has no memory of his life as Neo aka "The One." The setting is no longer The City, the ambiguous mega-metropolis of the original film trilogy, but a more realistic San Francisco, coated in warm, distinctly un-Matrixy colours. Thomas reports strange dreams, seeing the city in lines of code, and flashes of images (some new, some from the original movies), including one of himself blinded, being operated on by machines. Thomas meets a stranger in a cafe (Carrie Ann Moss), is seen quaffing blue pills like they are candy, is intrigued by flocks of birds in the sky and by a copy of Alice in Wonderland. He also sees images of himself as an old man. Eventually he flushes the blue pills down a sink, and accepts a red pill offered by a man strangely familiar yet completely different (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II).

Anderson is approached by a young woman (Jessica Henwick) who offers to show him the truth and calls him "Neo." She guides him through a door that acts as a shortcut to another part of the world, where he meets Trinity, this time her body apparently riven by lines of green code. The strange man spars with Anderson in a familiar dojo, angering him until he unleashes a blast of power.  We then see the world outside the Matrix, with the Machines still harvesting humans in immense vertical battery piles and a hovership hiding in the ruins of an old city. Trinity and Anderson meet on a rooftop in San Francisco, whilst the young woman fights Agents. She guides several other characters through a portal from what appears to be a cinema onto a speeding train, chased by rocket launcher-wielding enemies. We see Trinity apparently awakening from the Matrix, the strange man finding reality becoming liquid, a lot more fighting scenes and Anderson stopping hundreds of bullets in mid-air. Anderson is then told by another stranger (Jonathan Groff) that it's very exciting to go back to the start, "back to the Matrix."

The Matrix Resurrections hits cinemas and, in the United States, HBO Max on 22 December.

Warner Brothers drop teasers for THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS

Warner Brothers has started the marketing cycle for their upcoming fourth Matrix movie, The Matrix Resurrections.

They've revamped the OG 1999 Matrix website, What is the Matrix?, and it now offers you a choice of red and blue pills. The pills take you to different teaser clips where a voice creepily identifies what time it is for you.

The Matrix Resurrections seemingly picks up twenty-odd years after the events of The Matrix Revolutions, which ended in a truce between the human rebels and the machine AIs after they joined forces to defeat Agent Smith, but something strange has clearly happened in the interim. Old characters are back, but with new names and limited or no memory of what happened to them the first time around. Some characters also seem to be back in new bodies, or with new faces. Early previews have hinted at a much stranger (and probably even more divisive) film than the soulless cash-in many were expecting.

A full trailer is expected on Thursday. The film itself will be released on 22 December this year in cinemas and, in the United States, on HBO Max.

The film sees the return of Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Ann Moss, Lambert Wilson, Daniel Bernhardt and Jada Pinkett Smith from the original trilogy, with new casting additions including Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Neil Patrick Harris, Jessica Yu Li Henwick, Toby Onwumere, Max Riemelt and Christina Ricci. The film is directed by Lana Wachowski (who co-directed the original trilogy) and co-written by Lana Wachowski with David Mitchell (yes, that one) and Aleksandar Hemon.