Last March, film duo Andy and Lana Wachowski announced that they were beginning work on a new Netflix series, Sense8, to be released as part of the streaming service toward the end of 2014.

Now the series, which will be a collaboration between the Wachowskis and J. Michael Straczynski, is getting some additional details in terms of overall plot and characters via TVLine.

Right now Amazon has The Ultimate Matrix Collection Blu-ray box set on sale for only $24.99 (that’s 62% off the list price of $64.99).

This set contains each film in the Matrix trilogy – The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, and The Matrix Revolutions – along with the animated anthology movie The Animatrix. Every disc is stocked with hours of informative supplements including critic and philosopher commentaries on the three live-action films, director commentaries on several segments of The Animatrix, behind-the-scenes documentaries, briefer featurettes exploring individual aspects of the movies, scenes filmed for the Enter the Matrix video game, and more. In addition to the four movie discs, the set also comes with an additional pair of bonus discs featuring documentaries about the philosophy and science behind the Matrix trilogy, multiple still galleries including production photos, storyboards, and theatrical posters, and an extensive media gallery with every trailer and TV spot created for the release of The Matrix and its sequels.

Clive Barker is returning to his cult favorite Hellraiser franchise, but this time, it’s in comic book form with Hellraiser #1, a new comics series from BOOM! Studios.

The 40-page full-color Hellraiser #1 will be written by Barker and Christopher Monfette with art by Leonardo Manco, and will sell for $3.99. Cover art is by Tim Bradstreet and Nick Percival, while the variant cover will be drawn and signed by Clive Barker.

This first issue will also contain a 10-page backup story written by the co-writer and co-director of The Matrix trilogy, Larry Wachowski.

The Matrix
10th Anniversary Blu-ray Edition
Directed by Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski
Starring Keanu Reeves, Hugo Weaving, Carrie-Anne Moss, Laurence Fishburne
Warner Home Entertainment
Release Date: March 31, 2009

Forget for a moment how you felt when you watched The Matrix Reloaded and then The Matrix Revolutions. Forget that those movies may have tainted your feeling on the original. Forget the pseudo-philosophical babble and the height of the story nearly causing the entire thing to collapse on top of itself. Forget that you ever knew the term “bullet time.” Forget all of that and try to remember how you felt back in 1999 when you sat in the movie theater and first saw a stranger new sci-fi action flick called The Matrix.

To call The Matrix a revolutionary film (even for the time) would be to completely miss the point. The Matrix wasn’t anything new — it was just a new way of bringing that style of story to audiences. Anyone that was fond of comics or anime was already familiar with the storytelling style of The Matrix. What it did was introduce that style to the masses. Remember, this was before “˜geek’ was considered cool, so being into comics or anime made you more of an outcast than trendy.

Given the choice of movies opening in theaters today — V For Vendetta, Monster-In-Law, or XXX: State of the Union — you bet your ass I’m going with V For Vendetta, starring Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving, with a script by Matrix creators Andy and Larry Wachowski adapted from the graphic novel by Alan Moore.

Moore, who has repeatedly disapproved of adaptations of his work, fought to have his name removed from the Vendetta film credits and promotions. In a recent NY TIMES article, he said he’d read the Vendetta script and thought it was “rubbish.” And most fans of the graphic novel will probably agree, because the Wachowski’s Vendetta — and agenda — is not exactly that of Moore’s.

So, why did I like it? Because I walked into this movie knowing full-well that I’d have to leave the book at the door. And, perhaps it’s because although it was promoted as an action flick the likes of Mission: Impossible, Vendetta is really propelled by its intelligent monologues, delivered with flair by the masked revolutionary “V” (Weaving) along with Portman’s convincing portrayal of frightened young protege Evey.

Or maybe I like that the main character is a revolutionary; or that the victims become the radicals; or possible because it sheds light on corrupt governments whose beleaguered citizens surrender their civil rights in exchange for what they believe is protection against terrorism.

Was this film a totally faithful panel-by-panel recreation of the graphic novel in the vain of Robert Rodriguez’s adaptation of Frank Miller’s Sin City? Absolutely not. What the filmmakers attempted to do was take a futuristic war-torn England and parallel it with current-day U.S. politics and policy by lifting the citizens out of Moore’s dystopia and into a worker-bee existence. This is probably where the biggest line was crossed, whereas V’s back story and Evey’s incarceration scenes help redeem the film for taking the aforementioned liberties.

RATING