10 Actors Who Were REJECTED For Recent Movies (And Why)

The Role: Agent Smith, the focal antagonist of The Matrix franchise, as was played so brilliantly by Hugo Weaving in the first three films, and played in "rebooted" form in The Matrix Resurrections by Jonathan Groff.

Why He Was Rejected: This one's a real bummer. Weaving was actually originally approached to reprise the Smith role once again, and though he was committed to appearing in London's National Theatre for three months when Resurrections was supposed to be filming, director Lana Wachowski initially tried to accommodate his schedule.

In the end, according to Weaving himself, Wachowski decided that she didn't want to wait for him and so opted to recast instead:

"I read the script and got an offer to my agent. I immediately responded yes to that, and then we went into negotiation. I was doing a play, at the time, but we were working out dates and things so that I could do both. And then, Lana decided that she didn't wanna change her dates, so I couldn't do it. In a nutshell, that's what happened."