Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter Reteaming for ‘Bill & Ted 3’
‘Bill & Ted Face the Music,’ which is being shopped in Cannes, is actually happening, some 29 years after the duo’s first excellent adventure.
It’s official: Wyld Stallyns are reforming.
Following 1989’s Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and 1991’s Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, The Hollywood Reporter can reveal that a much-discussed third Bill & Ted installment — Bill & Ted Face the Music — is now firmly in the works some 27 years later. Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter are set to reprise their iconic roles as time-traveling metalheads “Ted” Theodore Logan and “Bill” S. Preston Esq.
Original creators Chris Matheson (Imagine That) and Ed Solomon (Men in Black, Mosaic, Now You See Me) have penned the script, with Dean Parisot (Galaxy Quest, Red 2, Fun With Dick and Jane) confirmed to direct. Scott Kroopf (Limitless) will produce together with Alex Lebovici and Steve Ponce of Hammerstone Studios, with Steven Soderbergh serving as an executive producer alongside Scott Fischer, John Ryan Jr. and John Santilli.
MGM owns the rights to the film and will release it in the U.S. under its Orion Pictures banner. Bloom is handling international sales, which commenced in Cannes where the project is likely to be one of the buzziest films in the market. Endeavor Content negotiated the deal.
Currently in preproduction, Bill & Ted Face the Music will see the duo long past their days as time-traveling teenagers and now weighed down by middle age and the responsibilities of family. They’ve written thousands of tunes, but they have yet to write a good one, much less the greatest song ever written. With the fabric of time and space tearing around them, a visitor from the future warns our heroes that only their song can save life as we know it. Out of luck and fresh out of inspiration, Bill and Ted set out on a time travel adventure to seek the song that will set their world right and bring harmony in the universe. Together with the aid of their daughters, a new crop of historical figures, and some sympathetic music legends, they find much, much more than just a song.
“We couldn’t be more excited to get the whole band back together again,” said Reeves and Winter. “Chris and Ed wrote an amazing script, and with Dean at the helm we’ve got a dream team!”
Bloom’s Alex Walton said: “Fans of Bill and Ted have been waiting for Reeves and Winter to reunite since their last Bogus Journey in 1991. This is excellent!”
Solomon and Matheson reportedly began working on a script in 2010, with both Reeves and Winter indicating in various interviews over the years that they were interested in making the film happen.
In 2017, Reeves told BBC talk show host Graham Norton that the film had been written and the story would see the duo “supposed to write a song to save the world and they haven’t done that. The pressure of having to save the world, their marriages are falling apart, their kids are kind of mad at them, and then someone comes from the future and tells them if they don’t write the song it’s just not the world, it’s the universe.”
Earlier this year, Solomon described the hold-up to Entertainment Weekly, saying: “We’ve been to the altar a few times. We get rejected right about the ‘now you may kiss the bride’ part of it.”
Reeves is represented by WME and Ziffren Brittenham; Winter is represented by CAA, Forward Entertainment, Hollander Entertainment and Sloss Eckhouse LawCo; Parisot is represented by WME; and Hammerstone Studios is represented by Rosen Law Group.