Cannes Flashback: Laurence Fishburne Hit the Fest With Mega Pic ‘Matrix Reloaded’

All eyes at this year’s Cannes Film Festival will be on the hotly anticipated premiere of Francis Ford Coppola’s self-funded epic Megalopolis. Laurence Fishburne is part of the ensemble cast and is no stranger to debuting a pricey, high-profile project at Cannes.

In 2003, Fishburne hit the Croisette for the Wachowskis’ action sequel The Matrix Reloaded, in which he reprised his role as Morpheus after originating the character in the 1999 sci-fi smash. Also in attendance was Fishburne’s then-wife Gina Torres, who played Cas in the sequels.

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After The Matrix introduced viewers to Neo (Keanu Reeves), a computer hacker who discovers that humans have been enslaved in a simulation engineered by AI machines, Reloaded catches up six months later with Neo’s journey alongside Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Morpheus as they battle the Machine Army. THR’s review was lukewarm but noted that Fishburne “handles well the transition to someone who is not quite a sidekick, yet must recede into a role that requires him to be the conduit of the Wachowskis’ philosophical musings.”

Fishburne will bring Coppola’s musings to the screen alongside Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf and Jon Voight in Megalopolis, the director’s first feature since he debuted Twixt at the Toronto Film Festival in 2011.

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