Bill & Ted 3: Co-Writer Ed Solomon Shares New Story Details
In case you’ve been trapped in the afterlife playing board games with death: Bill & Ted 3 — it’s actually called Bill & Ted Face the Music — is a really real thing which is happening, like, for really real. And soon: it’s in preproduction now.
We already knew the basic premise of the flick, which was revealed by Keanu Reeves (a.k.a. “Ted” Theodore Logan) back in 2012: now in their fifties, Wyld Stallyns still haven’t fulfilled their destiny by writing a song so incredible that it unites the universe and gives birth to a utopia.
But we now know a whole lot more, thanks to a new Collider interview with Ed Solomon, who co-wrote all three Bill & Ted movies with Chris Matheson. Here’s Solomon’s basic rundown of the story:
“Bill and Ted were told at 16 that they were going to be the greatest people who ever lived. That they were gonna write a song that is going to save the world, and it hasn’t happened. And now they are middle-aged men. They’ve got wives who used to be princesses in medieval England who are now working double shifts at Denny’s, they’ve got teenagers that are about to leave home, money is tight, and they’ve been chasing this dream, writing song after song, when somebody from the future shows up and says, ‘You have 24 hours. The fate of all of space/time depends on it – and if it doesn’t happen now, it’s never gonna happen.’ Bill and Ted are confused because they know they had to have written it, because after all the people in the future told them they did.. so they just must not have written it yet. So in their desperation they decide their only option is to go into the future – to when the have written it – and to steal it from themselves. What follows is a kind of utterly absurd, Christmas Carol-like journey through their lives past, present, and future. Their daughters (Bill has a daughter named Thea, Ted’s daughter is named Billie) are also very involved in trying to help them.”
Bill and Ted have daughters! That’s a cute idea. Solomon goes on to describe the girls as “brilliant and ridiculous and sweet,” but it’s the “brilliant” part that stood out to me… it would be pretty funny if these two lovable dimwits somehow helped conceive a pair of actual geniuses.
Solomon also drops some interesting nuggets not related to the story, like the fact that they are, indeed, hoping to start filming as soon as Reeves wraps the currently-in-production John Wick 3… and that Academy fucking Award winner STEVEN FUCKING SODERBERGH is an executive producer on the movie (he just worked with Solomon on HBO’s Mosaic), acting as “an overseer or consigliere,” in Solomon’s words. Which basically means he’s giving script notes. But still! Did anyone ever think Steven Soderbergh’s name would be on a Bill & Ted movie? What’s next, Christopher Nolan’s Beavis and Butt-Head?
You can read the entire interview here.
