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8 Sci-Fi Movies That Would Make Great TV Shows

As we've explained elsewhere, Westworld is the latest hot ticket on television. A loose adaptation of Michael Crichton's 1973 movie about a robot theme park gone wrong, it's an ingenious 21st century update of the source material that keys into modern concerns and ideas, like artificial intelligence and the uncanny valley.

8) The Matrix

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The Movie: In 1999, the Wachowski siblings made one of the most influential genre films of the next decade in The Matrix. Its sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, are rightly criticized for not being as good, but the first film remains a classic of its kind.

The TV Show: Something Westworld shows is that TV audiences are hungry for smart idea-led science fiction, especially if it has an existential and philosophical edge. If someone out there wants the next Westworld on their hands, the perfect property to adapt would be The Matrix. For one, virtual reality is probably even more pertinent now than it was back in 1999, given that the technology has come forward leaps and bounds since then.

The Wachowskis themselves have even dabbled in TV already, namely Netflix’s Sense8 (the second season of which is arriving soon). As such, a Matrix series doesn’t seem such an absurd idea. Netflix would probably be the perfect home for it, as well.

Story-wise, it would be best to tackle an alternate version of the same idea with different characters, rather than following the narrative trajectory of the original trilogy. That way, it would keep things fresh and could also go some way to fixing the mistakes that the latter two films made.