'Matrix 4' title and trailer revealed in CinemaCon reel

Fans and critics have been wowed by trailer footage from the Lana Wachowski-directed movie

Keanu Reeves's famous bullet-dodging scene in 1999's 'The Matrix'. Photo: Warner Bros

Fans of The Matrix have been long waiting for the fourth instalment of the sci-fi franchise. While they still have three months to wait until it hits cinemas, Warner Bros on Tuesday gave an insight into the coming film by revealing the title and some unseen footage.

Titled The Matrix: Resurrections, Warner Bros shared the brand new trailer to a limited audience on its CinemaCon reel. The trailer is expected to have its wider release later on Wednesday.

Set in a near-future San Francisco, the new footage starts with Neil Patrick Harris's so-far unnamed therapist character talking to Keanu Reeves’s Neo.

“Am I crazy?” Neo asks, to which Harris's character replies, “We don’t use that word in here.”

Other familiar faces appear.

Neo encounters Carrie Anne Moss’s Trinity in a cafe, where she asks him, “Have we met?”

And, of course, there is a shot of the famous pills. Blue pills are seen spilling into a sink, to the soundtrack of Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit.

A shot of an ageing Neo then appears, with a younger Morpheus telling Neo it's “time to fly” as he hands him a red pill.

It seems that Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays the Morpheus-type figure, as Laurence Fishburne is not starring in the fourth film.

Critics' reactions to the 'The Matrix: Resurrections' trailer

Film critics who previewed the Lana Wachowski-directed footage have been impressed.

“I just saw the trailer for The Matrix: Resurrections at CinemaCon and it looks so bad***,” American film critic Scott Menzel tweeted. “I was so worried that it wasn’t going to wow me but I was totally wrong. The only thing that shocked me is that a few of the main characters don’t appear in the trailer.”

The Hollywood Reporter's Aaron Couch tweeted: "Folks, I don't even know where to begin with The Matrix. Wow! It's called The Matrix: Resurrections. Thomas Anderson is in therapy, having forgotten The Matrix. He meets Trinity at a coffee shop. Neither remembers one another."