by Jean-Yves Le Moine, published on 22.07.2009

One of the first examples of transmedia was the simultaneously real and virtual Matrix universe of the Wachowski brothers. Everyone remembers the three movies, but there have been printed and Web comics as well, short films, Animatrix, a video game and a massively multiplayer online game.

The Wachowski bros. didn’t invent franchise marketing with spin-off product merchandising: they succeeded in reinventing it by creating a Matrix universe in which each medium participates in the overall story. Each story was a different point of entry and adapted to each audience, making it easier for everyone to meet and identify with Neo and his famed matrix.

Not all the characters were present in each story, and each story existed in and of itself.

Henry Jenkins explains it clearly in his book Convergence Culture, stressing the ingenuity with which the various parts were positioned and executed:

“The Wachowski brothers played the transmedia game very well, putting out the original film first to stimulate interest, offering up a few Web comics to sustain the hard-core fan’s hunger for more information, launching the anime in anticipation of the second film, releasing the computer game alongside it to surf the publicity, bringing the whole cycle to a conclusion with The Matrix Revolutions, and then turning the whole mythology over to the players of the massively multiplayer online game. Each step along the way built on what has come before, while offering new points of entry.”

Each piece in the Wachowski brothers’ oeuvre, films, comics, shorts, game, MMORPG, can be appreciated independently, but the sum of all these experiences creates a universe with added value for the viewer and more especially for the fan: as a result, he can get a taste of all the interrelations between the media and trace his own viewing itinerary, a route he can then share and compare with others.