Highly influential and innovative, vastly discussed and picked apart, The Wachowski Brothers' greatest claim to fame is an award-winning, 1999 science-fiction flick, starring Keaunu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne, widely considered one of the greatest movies of any genre.
Honestly, I didn't think they could do it, it was too ambitious. The Matrix is exactly what they pitched, but they were designing those cameras to get those freeze-frames, and I was like, "If that doesn't work, the movie looks ridiculous." I didn't feel comfortable with the level of importance placed on that effect working properly… That's probably the only one that I turned down that I shouldn't have, but when you see somebody do it like Keanu you think, "Thank God."
- Will Smith, originally considered for the film's lead character, Neo.
