Will Smith as Neo in ‘The Matrix’ Mashup Will Blow You Away (Video)

Oscar winner was offered, but turned down, the Keanu Reeves role in the late ’90s

If you thought it was impossible to picture anyone other than Keanu Reeves as Neo, the computer hacker living a double life in “The Matrix” film franchise, think again.

The YouTube Channel The Usual Suspect put together a freakishly amazing mashup… with Will Smith as the classic sci-fi film’s star.

Check it out above.

“Back in the late 90’s Will Smith was offered the role of Neo in ‘The Matrix’ but he turned it down. So I made a trailer that shows what the film might’ve looked like had he been cast,” an editor from The Usual Suspect said on Reddit. 

“This took about 3 days,” they said. ” I started by taking the official trailer for The Matrix and removing all of Keanu Reeves dialogue and footage. Then I had to replace the rest of the footage with more high quality footage.”

From there, the TUS editor found footage in various Smith films that would fit into the scene’s trailer and just dropped them in.

“There’s about 10 instances here though where I put Will Smith INTO the shot,” TUS said. “So there I looked for clips of Will Smith making a similar pose to Reeves. Then I rotobrushed in After Effects and color corrected. Then I removed Reeves in Photoshop, motion tracked accordingly, and voila.”

And a masterpiece was born.

Read about their entire trailer-making process here.

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