Keanu Reeves Blames a Bloated Budget for Delay of Bill & Ted 3

Now that Beavis and Butt-Head are dead again, nostalgic metal fans clamoring for a sentimental reminder of their past glory days can turn their attention to the revival of another cinematic property: namely, Bill & Ted. We first heard rumblings of a Bill & Ted 3 more than two years ago, and at varying times, it was even reported that the movie had a completed script and had hired a director. And yet here we are with no further adventures of William “Bill” S. Preston, Esq. Theodore “Ted” Logan. What gives?

While promoting his awesome-looking new movie John Wick (an action film about — I shit you not — a retired badass who seeks violent retribution against the men who killed his puppy), B&T co-star Keanu Reeves revealed the cause of the delay to Coming Soon:

“It didn’t help that the first script that they brought in was probably budgeted at $150 million dollars. I don’t know if Bill & Ted carry that much weight. Part of the argument is that it’s not that popular internationally, that’s where so much of the funding for movies comes from these days. They’ve worked on the script and the budget, just trying to get the right script and then get the business side wrapped up, financiers and rights, all the show business stuff.”

If a $150,000,000 budget sounds totally fucking nuts, that’s because it is: this year’s two highest-grossing films, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America: The Winter Soldier cost $170 million each, and those were far safer bets than the second sequel to a low-budget comedy that’s twenty-five years old. Fuck, the year’s highest-grossing live-action comedy, 22 Jump Street, only cost $50 million, and that had two major stars in it; most of the world doesn’t even know that Alex Winter (who played Bill) is even still alive, and Reeves’ last three films made a total of less than $39 million domestically (and even with foreign grosses, the very costly 47 Ronin didn’t make its budget back). No studio or investor is gonna fork over $150 million for this movie.

While we wait for them to whittle the budget down to something more reasonable, we can at least take comfort in Reeves’ fun-sounding description of a scene from the hypothetical movie:

“There’s a great scene where Bill and Ted are in jail and we’re seeing our future us’s and they’re all tatted and hard. They’re like, [tough sounding] “What’s up, dude? Hey dude. Hey guy.” “Stop calling me dude!” They want to beat up Bill and Ted because they’ve inherited the life that they fucked up. They’re miserable and they hate Bill and Ted. There’s some funny stuff!”

I’m not sure that it is, but I’d love to go to a theater and find out someday!