2 Roles Sandra Bullock Passed On — And the Millions She Left Behind
Sandra Bullock has built a career on savvy choices, but even with hits like Speed, The Proposal, and The Blind Side, she admits there’s one call she wishes she could undo. One regret still lingers behind the box-office glory.
Every star has that one project that got away. Sandra Bullock has more hits than most of Hollywood (Speed, The Proposal, The Blind Side), and she’s made a lot of smart calls. But even she’ll tell you there’s at least one she wishes she hadn’t passed on — and another she’s glad she dodged.
The Matrix that got away
It’s basically impossible to picture anyone but Keanu Reeves dodging bullets in The Matrix. But before he signed on, the Wachowskis and the producers cast a very wide net. We’re talking Will Smith, Nicolas Cage, and yes, Sandra Bullock.
After Speed turned Bullock into an action headliner, producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura says they were so committed to landing the right lead that they even considered flipping Neo to a woman specifically for her. He and Joel Silver already knew her from Demolition Man, sent her the script, and tried to make it work. It didn’t. At that moment, it just wasn’t her thing, and the idea went nowhere.
"There haven’t been any roles that I wanted that I didn’t get, but there was a movie I wish I had done: The Matrix. At the time [I was approached about it], it wasn’t cast with Keanu, and I didn’t see myself with the person they wanted. Later, I saw the movie and loved it. It was sexy and great because of Carrie-Anne and Keanu."
That’s Bullock, later, owning the regret. Hard to argue — The Matrix didn’t just hit, it rewired action movies for years. It spawned sequels, a revival, and a pile of games, with Reeves returning again and again as Neo.
Matrix by the numbers (via The Numbers and ScreenRant)
- The Matrix (1999): $65M budget, $466,281,862 worldwide, 83% on Rotten Tomatoes
- The Matrix Reloaded (2003): $150M budget, $738,576,929 worldwide, 74% on Rotten Tomatoes
- The Matrix Revolutions (2003): $150M budget, $427,300,260 worldwide, 33% on Rotten Tomatoes
- The Matrix Resurrections (2021): $190M budget, $160,163,197 worldwide, 63% on Rotten Tomatoes
- Total worldwide box office: $1,792,322,248
- Keanu’s reported upfront paychecks: $10M (Matrix), $15M (Reloaded), $15M (Revolutions), $12–14M (Resurrections)
- Keanu’s back-end haul: about $35M on the first film; roughly $120M in bonuses combined for Reloaded and Revolutions
How far it really got with Bullock
To spell it out cleanly: producers sent Bullock the script, were open to making Neo a woman, and pitched hard. She passed. Later, after seeing the finished movie with Keanu and Carrie-Anne Moss, she had that unmistakable "ah, I should’ve done that" feeling. It’s one of those fascinating casting what-ifs that shows just how wild the search got before the pieces finally clicked.
The superhero she skipped (on purpose)
Fast-forward to 2021: Bullock pops up on Jimmy Kimmel Live! while promoting The Unforgivable and reveals she once turned down a superhero movie. Here’s the twist — it wasn’t Marvel or DC. She says her son Louis told her not to do it, and she listened. When the film eventually came out, she thought, basically, yikes, bullet dodged.
She also mentioned she’s never been approached by Marvel and joked that she doesn’t think she’s "Marvel material." The only clue on the mystery project: Louis was somewhere between 4 and 8 years old when the offer happened. Not exactly a smoking gun, but if you want to start triangulating release windows, there’s your breadcrumb.