Village Roadshow Entertainment, a co-producer of “The Matrix Resurrections,” has filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros., alleging the studio parent’s decision to release the sequel on HBO Max and in theaters at the same time was a breach of contract, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
The suit, which was filed Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleges that WarnerMedia, a unit of AT&T, pushed up the film’s release date to 2021 from 2022 in order to bolster its subscriber base on HBO Max.
In the lawsuit, Village Roadshow Pictures stated that the decision was taken despite knowing that it would ‘decimate’ the box office revenue of the ‘blockbuster film’. It thus ‘deprived’ Village Roadshow of the ‘economic upsides’ that HBO and its affiliates would gain from it, the lawsuit further said.
Warner Bros hit back at the allegations, calling it a ‘frivolous attempt’ by Village Roadshow Pictures to ‘avoid the contractual commitment’ to co-operate in the arbitration by the former against the latter. Village Roadshow also stated that Warner Bros had given a platform for ‘rampant piracy’ through the release of the film on a streaming platform on the day of its release.
The Matrix Resurrections is the fourth installment of the original reality-or-simulation Keanu Reeves vehicle. By early February it had grossed around $37 million at the North American box office. The Matrix, by contrast, took a total of $172 million.