Sophia Stewart

Posted on Dec 2, 2011

The Mother Of The Matrix: Sophia Stewart

Interview Conducted By: Tom Reider
Mondo Film & Video Guide Feature Contributor

Many film fans may not recognize the name Sophia Stewart, but she may be among the most important film contributors in the past 30 years.  Sophia “Mother of the Matrix” Stewart made national headlines in 2003, when she filed her billion dollar Copyright Infringement lawsuit against the creators of The Matrix and Terminator series.  Sophia has spent the last eight years fighting some of Hollywood’s biggest players including; 20th Century Fox and Warner Brothers in a legal battle that would give her recognition as the creator of two of the biggest Hollywood blockbuster series.  Currently Sophia is involved in three lawsuits that could make her one of the richest female writers in history, but her primary focus is to validate her manuscript The Third Eye as the original source work for both The Matrix and Terminator.

From an early age, Sophia was considered by many a child prodigy with impressive mathematical abilities and a vision into the future. Sophia was able to pass the New York Regents and skip High School to attend the City University of New York. From there, Sophia moved on to attend the University of Southern California Film School where she studied cinema.

It’s there, at USC film school in 1981, where Sophia was able to cultivate her visionary gifts to write and illustrate The Third Eye manuscript. The Third Eye tells a science fiction version of the futuristic second coming of Christ. The hero I-Khan, who is based on legendary heavyweight boxing champion, Muhammad Ali, would not only change the direction of African American Super Heroes, but also provide a positive role model for children of all races. The ground breaking manuscript incorporates futuristic technology, impressive graphics and an inspiring storyline. Sophia submitted The Third Eye manuscript several times to industry insiders in an effort to turn her story into a film. The film was never made as The Third Eye, but was it turned into two other Hollywood blockbusters developed by those who had access to Sophia’s manuscript?

In the following years, Sophia would learn about two movies with storylines similar to her Third Eye manuscript, The Terminator and The Matrix. The similarities provoked Sophia to use her paralegal skills and file lawsuits against the makers of the films. Currently she is moving ahead to provide her own interpretation of the Matrix series. If given the financial backing, Sophia’s creativity could give a jolt to the Matrix series that has been dormant since 2003. The Mondo Film & Video Guide recently had the pleasure of speaking with Sophia about her manuscripts, ongoing legal activities, and other current projects...

MONDO: Can you give me a quick background of your life prior to writing The Third Eye?  I understand you tested out of high school to attend the City University of New York.

STEWART: I didn’t go to high school; I took the New York regents.  I scored really high on the regents and went to the City University of New York.  I went on to USC film school, where I studied cinema.  I received a degree in journalism, with a double minor in law and psychology. I’m a paralegal, a master writer and a visionary see-er; like Nostradamus, Leonardo Da Vinci and Edgar Cayce. I’m also a master writer like H.G. Welles, Jules Verne or Gene Rodenberry, so I can visualize things and put them on paper.

MONDO: I see child prodigy when I look you up, would you consider yourself a child prodigy?

STEWART: I think so, because I was doing taxes when I was 11 years old. I was already an entrepreneur when I was 11 years old doing taxes for grown ups.  I scored a 98 on the IRS exam. I was doing payroll for a company when I was a teenager, so I was well versed in numbers.  I’m very gifted in law, as I’m the one who filed my own lawsuits in 2003.  I worked for Columbia pictures, which is in the same lot as Warner Brothers and I used to work for Channel 13 in NYC with the Oscar award winning producer Perry Miller Adato.

MONDO: You have expressed your ideas through numbers in a lot of your literary works, specifically the number three. I assume you are using that because of the symbolism of the trinity or triad showing the unity of mind, body and soul.

STEWART: I’m very spiritual but not religious. Spirituality and metaphysics. In fact I came up with the first metaphysical movies, The Terminator and The Matrix. I was just so disappointed in the late 1970’s black exploitation movies – they were horrible.  If you’ve read my book, you can see it’s almost 30 years ago and I’m talking about digital downloading, bar codes, scanners and virtual reality before anybody heard of this terminology.  I’m talking about nanotechnology, microchips, computerized warfare and naked cyborgs; while all the old science fiction writers are still writing about H.G. Wells, metals, and robots.

MONDO: I’m wondering if you can expand upon how you developed the special effects in The Matrix and The Terminator. When I think about them, I think about special effects and artificial intelligence. Can you talk a little about the special effects in The Third Eye?

STEWART: Those were my special effects. Sam Winston brought my special effects alive on the screen. I had special effects that have never been seen or shown on the screen before.  In The Terminator you see the naked cyborg coming down out of blue lightening like a blue meteorite landing on Earth naked and without shame.

MONDO: That was in The Third Eye manuscript right?

STEWART: It was all in my manuscript.  The red and blue pills were already in my manuscript, as well as the graphics and ships.  Right now you can go on YouTube and see UFO ships that match the ship in my book perfectly.  It’s like I had already seen that ship 30 years ago and somebody took a picture and put in on YouTube.

MONDO: So you developed the pictures for the manuscript yourself?

STEWART: Those were my pictures.  I drew them just like Leonardo Da Vinci. Remember when Da Vinci drew the Gatling gun, the parachute, and the Vitruvian Man?  I’m talking about the projection of the body being divided into three parts and their fighting with the Kai while the bodies are on the ship.  Those are my special effects.

A lot of people don’t understand that The Matrix and The Terminator are one.  If you read the Matrix 4 scripts right now it would blow your mind.  I have new graphics and new special effects, new characters that have never been shown on any screen anywhere.  Nanotechnology that is so far advanced that it is at least two to five hundred years from now.

I’m a see-er; I don’t think that most people understand what a see-er is.  A see-er can transcend time and see into the future and articulate it. I’m able to transcend time, see into the future and because I’m a master writer, I’m able to articulate it. See, there are some people who are see-er’s right now on the earth, but they can’t articulate what they see, they don’t understand it to write it.

MONDO: How long have you had this gift?

STEWART: Ever since I was a little kid I had that gift.  I was never what you call a conventional little kid.  I had my own apartment and knew more than my mother and father. I put myself through school. I took care of myself and I always made money. It was always easy for me to make money because I’m a gifted visionary.  As long as we are alive those gifts don’t leave you. You are able to make money because those gifts and you are one. Those gifts are phenomenal gifts and everybody has their own special gift. No ones gift is the same; everyone has a gift to do something. People have to find out what their gifts are and cultivate their gifts, instead of trying to copy off of others.  The whole problem is you will never get anywhere if you try to copy off of others. A lot of people come up to me and ask, well how do you become rich and famous and I say its easy, you take the gift that was given you and find out what it is, cultivate it and then offer that gift as service to everyone, all of humanity and that’s how you get rewarded with fame and money and love and everything.

MONDO: I read where you had an accident when you were younger and that led to a higher cognitive power.

STEWART: Well it wasn’t an accident. When my brother and I were little, he got a kiddie bow and arrow and took a little slender stick and shot me with it and it did open up my eye.  I was already gifted, but it did open up my eye the way the Tibetans do it, they have a practical way of doing it for the Dalai Lama.  Well mine was accidentally open, but there are no accidents, there are no mistakes so it probably was meant for my third eye to be open. That did happen when I was a kid.

MONDO: What or who were your inspirations for writing The Third Eye? You can definitely see the Bible with the second coming of Christ as well as Star Wars. Are there any other inspirations or can you expand upon those two?

STEWART: Let me explain to people, because people always say it’s – Star Wars.  It’s not Star Wars, I went to see Star Wars and I couldn’t believe that Lucas was talking about the point of view of Darth Vader, the devil falling from the light to the dark. It was like he was explaining his fall and putting it in science fiction form.  He was actually telling the devils side of the story – which blew me away, so when I saw that I thought wow, there has never been a metaphysical futuristic story about the second coming of Christ. It’s mentioned in Revelations that Christ’s going to come back and I thought – Why don’t I put his story on the screen and Lucas could direct it.

I wrote about the second coming of Christ, the evolutions of consciousness, man vs. machine. So my story is about the Christ returning to earth, going through the womb, which is matrix in Latin. The machines try to kill him because you have to realize in the future I’m seeing machines are going to enslave the humans.  The Christ coming back going through evolution taking the form of a human body and walking the walk as a human to show everybody that you can overcome all adversity, that you didn’t need superhuman power, you didn’t need all this other stuff; guns and armies and tanks but you really had all of everything inside of you and all you had to do is evolve and use your gift and you could overcome all of this stuff and ascend into your light body and defeat the machines which take over In the future.

What you’re looking at is one epic story; The Terminator and The Matrix. One epic story that spans past, present and future time travel. When you look at The Terminator, that’s the past which is like the end time revelations and when you look at The Matrix, that’s the future or what it will be or what it will become in the future if you make it through evolution.

MONDO: Who are the Rothfellers from The Third Eye?

STEWART: They are the Illuminati’s, what I did was take part of the Rothschild’s name and part of the Rockefeller’s name. I’m talking about the Illuminati’s almost 30 years before they became popular.  I’m talking about the future. The Third Eye is not the pineal gland. The Third Eye I’m talking about is an all seeing eye of enlightenment, all powerful. I’m talking metaphysics, occultism, symbolism, ancient knowledge that goes all the way back to Kemet, to Egypt.

MONDO: I also noticed that you went back to ancient Egypt for your story When the God’s walked the Earth.

STEWART: The reason why is because the Moses child is the same as the Christ child, but no one has compared the stories. The Pharaoh and Pontius Pilot were killing the kids and so what happened is Moses was put in a reed basket in the Nile River and the Pharaohs sister gets him out of the water because she can’t have a baby and he becomes her child and grows up In Pharaoh’s house, but he’s not of the Pharaohs. He learns all of their language, all of their powers. He goes out and protects his people and frees them from the Pharaoh which is similar to the Christ story.

MONDO: In The Matrix, the Oracle character is based on Sophia Stewart, correct?

STEWART: All the characters from The Terminator and The Matrix are created by me.  When Warner Brothers admitted that the Wachowski’s never had any source work and when they pulled up their copyright there was nothing there but a napkin. A napkin with Matrix on it and you can’t copyright a title.  People ask me how much of it is the Wachowski’s and I say nothing, zero. They created nothing, they had no source work, they took my work and adapted it to the screen just like Peter Jackson did J.R Tolkien’s Lords of the Rings, the same way they did John Grisham’s The Pelican Brief and The Firm. All they did was adapt the man’s work. They took the book and made a script out of it, anybody can do that but you can’t do that if you don’t have any source work, you can’t do anything if you don’t have any source work.

MONDO: Where did they get that source work?

STEWART: I sent it to them in 1986 to be turned into a comic book. This is going to blow your mind; they made the movie and the comic book.
They made them both?

Yes, the comic book was coming out with the movie. In 1999 the comic book came out and soon as I came knocking on the door for the first release of The Matrix they snatched the comic book up. There were a lot of fans that knew about it.

MONDO: I knew that you submitted your work for a comic book but I never knew a comic book was published.

STEWART: That’s why they snatched it back, it was just too incriminating, but they still incriminated themselves because the introductions of The Matrix and The Terminator were the same, which was my protective expression which proved that I was the writer of the works.

MONDO: Is Matrix 4 in the works?

STEWART: Matrix 4 is in the works, were going to make anywhere from $4 to$6 Billion. I’ve created new graphics, new special effects that eclipse The Matrix and a brilliant storyline that is going to blow everybody’s mind.

MONDO: What are you going to do for the cast of Matrix 4?

STEWART: I will get the same people like Keanu Reaves, Laurence Fishburne, and Carrie-Anne Moss. I see Della Reese as the Oracle, I see Felicia Rashad as the young oracle for Matrix 5. I have to make everybody young in Matrix 5, so the Matrix franchise will continue with new life. I’ve created the Indigo and Crystal children which will branch off into their own T.V series and their own franchise. I see in Matrix 4 a guardian angel for the Oracle which I see Uma Thurman playing. I see the adversarial one that goes up against Neo as Benicio Del Toro. I see for the 4G machines that take the place of the old agent programs; Janet Jackson, Jadin Smith, and Cole Hauser. Of course I’d bring back Jada Pinkett Smith’s character and I’d also bring back Hugo Weeving and a lot of the agents.

I’ve created some phenomenal machines. They’re 4G machines that are different from any machines that have ever been seen on the screen, which is going to scare the hell out of people because I’m showing what’s really going to happen in the future. The stuff that I’ve got is astronomical.

I was thinking about turning Matrix 4 into a graphic novel because people can’t wait for it to be on the screen. We’ve been waiting for a new Matrix for 11 years. There are people that have been born who have never seen The Matrix on the big screen.  They have never seen it 3D much less 3D fusion. 3D fusion is where it comes off the screen and you don’t have to wear any glasses.

MONDO: Have you received any resistance from Warner Brothers in developing Matrix 4?

STEWART: Of course not, don’t get confused with everything that is posted on the internet. Believe me Warner Brothers is going to want to be part of this. I received a call from Barrie Osborne who was one of the producers on the first Matrix. He called me all the way from Australia, where he’s doing a remake of The Great Gatsby. I’ve got some information from Barry Meyer, the CEO of Warner Brothers and his approach was for me to get in contact with all the people from The Matrix and see how they feel about coming on board and them distributing it and working together on Matrix 4.  So there’s no hostility between me and Warner Brothers.

People need to be set straight about spewing their hate on the internet and they need to ask Warner Brothers and ask myself and see that there is no animosity between me and Warner Brothers. Warner Brothers have never denied that they didn’t want to pay me. I’m the one that turned down the money because had I accepted the money they would own the franchise. Warner Brothers is a publically owned corporation with shareholders. A lot of the shareholders didn’t even know that they don’t even own The Matrix. They can’t even get the trademark because they don’t own any copyrights.

There is no injunction stopping me or stopping my book. I’m using the images, I use the name, and I sign off as the writer.  If I had taken whatever little money they had offered $5 or $7 million, I wouldn’t be talking about doing Matrix 4.

MONDO: So what are the outstanding court cases?

STEWART: I’m involved in three court cases. For some reason people seem to think I’m only involved in one court case. I’m involved in a Federal case for $150 million dollars against four attorneys that sabotaged my 2003 California court case. I’m also still involved in my California court case from 2003 that was $900 million, I’m going to say just over a billion with the damages. The third is a California bankruptcy court for Terminator 4 for $370 million dollars as the creditor owner. I put in proof that I own The Terminator.

MONDO: When do you foresee filming or release of Matrix 4?

STEWART: We’re in pre-production right now.  We are talking to investors and that is as far as I’m going to leave it and  you guys can read about it in the news when everything comes out about who actually got to partner up with me.

MONDO: I understand that Muhammad Ali was the inspiration for the ‘Ikahn’ or ‘Neo’ character.

STEWART: That’s correct. Muhammad Ali helped me back in the early 1980’s, in fact he introduced me to a lot of directors and producers. I know you read the news articles that Sophia Stewart was going to come out with the first black science fiction movie with black super-heroes. In the late 70’s, the black exploitation movies had all these horrible characters that were killed off immediately, so that’s why I was inspired to create the Neo character.

They wanted Will Smith but he turned it down. He would have been the perfect Neo character as I modeled the character after Muhammad Ali and as you know Will Smith got to play him in the movie Ali.  Will Smith turned down The Matrix for Wild Wild West. When one person turns it down another one gets it. Keanu Reaves is a man of color. The Matrix is multi-racial and that’s why I think all the races around the world can identify with the film.

MONDO: The quote “I’ll be back” from The Terminator, is this your line?

STEWART: I know you know where that came from. They got that from me, its right there in The Third Eye. “We’ll be back”, and the character Ikahn comes back as three different cyborgs. Let me tell you something, some fans have been waiting years to find my book. When it went on amazon the physical book was sold out twice. They have a waiting list right now for a used copy. Its memorabilia, the autographed copy was selling for a $100 in 2005 and an un-autographed hardcover was $50, the paperback for $29.99 and the eBook for $24.99. I’m just telling you and the fans I don’t have no hating if they get the book. It is what it is, its right there in the book and you can’t deny its The Matrix and The Terminator.

MONDO: Would you ever do a book tour?

STEWART: I’m going to do a book tour. I should have done a book tour a long time ago. I’m probably in the greatest of demand. I’d do a complete sell out tour because I’ve been reclusive. I’ve been doing interviews, I’ve been writing and I’ve been involved in three court cases. I think people don’t understand how much work I’ve been putting in so they think that I’m just being reclusive on purpose – but I’m not. I think there’s like 60 million people are following me when you Google me I think there’s like 20,500,000 hits and yahoo is in the millions. I think there are about 60 million people following me.

Think about this for one moment, there are 7 billion people on earth and every day there are thousands finding out about me waking up and hearing for the first time that a black woman wrote The Matrix and The Terminator and their phones are buzzing so word of mouth is actually making me a superstar. Word of mouth is the greatest publicity in the world. Hollywood tries to cultivate that medium and I’ve got that medium.
You can ask anybody on the street the name Sophia Stewart. They know the name, they might not know what I look like but they damn sure know the name. I can make it explode because all I have to do is an infomercial or get up and do a book tour and it will explode all over America. People will start waking up and buying the book because 10 million people might hear it for the first time and their looking for that book and it’s on Amazon.

MONDO: What about the book Soul-Less?

STEWART: Soul-Less is a prequel that shows you how the machines are born. It tells you how the machines were born. In Matrix 4, I explain how the machines enslave the humans. How did John Connors, JC, Jesus Christ, become Neo one in the same. You know you want to see that.

MONDO: How about a Sophia Stewart story? I heard that was in the works at one time.

STEWART: There’s tons of people asking to do documentaries on me. In fact The Truth Collective did a mini thing on me. They wanted to come in from California and do a show, but I’m not letting anybody touch my story right now because I’m going to explode and I’m going to get the big boys.

I’ve been turning down documentaries and all kinds of people. They don’t understand, maybe my method is slow and people don’t understand my method to madness but believe me I have a plan as to why I do anything and I do it slow and meticulously.  I’m not letting anybody get control or get something that they can later make tons of money off.  So I’m holding out for the big ones.

When I went into Universal Studios, I met with Rick Finklestein in April for Matrix 4 and Matrix 5; he told me that the Sophia Stewart story is bigger than The Matrix and The Terminator. He said Universal Studios should be doing the Sophia Stewart story. I’m writing my story myself and it’s going to blow your mind. I’ve been writing my own story since 1999. I’m way ahead, before somebody can even think of something I’m already doing it.

MONDO: What eventually would you like to be Sophia Stewart’s legacy?

STEWART: I’m doing it, with me speaking on over 4,000 interviews, print, magazine, radio, television, internet, blogs and newspapers. I’m leaving a legacy so people can hear this as I want to be recorded so my words can live on. I speak my mind because words are very powerful and millions of people will hear you over and over even if you’re not on earth anymore. I want something positive, I want people to hear positive energy and words so it can inspire others to greater heights, greater things, greater beings, greater people, greater living.

MONDO: Are there any other projects you would like to mention?

STEWART: I’m going to be doing other projects after Matrix 4, but Matrix 4 is my primary film project right now and it’s very important that the whole world sees Matrix 4 as it continues the evolution for the people and the growth. I’m thinking about doing it into a graphic novel for people so that might be something that I’m doing next. Matrix 4 is definitely coming to the screen, they can count on it.

MONDO: Where can people reach Sophia Stewart?

STEWART: People can go to my website, truthaboutMatrix.com or they can get my eBook or they can get my physical book once I get a release on those. I’ll be announcing on my Facebook account and my website where people can buy my physical book and my autograph and I’ll probably be doing a book tour.