A Middle-aged Bill & Ted to Return to the Big Screen

Comments

Bill and Ted
A third installment of the late-80s/early-90s Bill & Ted franchise — showing us the wayward, universe-saving slackers in middle-age — has been said to be in the works for a while now.

But in a recent interview with Yahoo, the man who portrayed the titular Bill, Alex Winter, let spill some details.

It seems that he and the film’s Ted, Keanu Reeves, are fully on board, and a third chapter is being constructed.

The summary Winter provided was brief, but not unpromising. He explains that the pair “will be 40-something and it’s all about Bill and Ted grown up, or not grown up.” He continued, “It’s really sweet and really [EXPLETIVE DELETED] funny. But it’s a Bill & Ted movie, that’s what it is. It’s for the fans of Bill & Ted. It fits very neatly in the [series]. It’s not going to feel like a reboot. The conceit is really funny: What if you’re middle-aged, haven’t really grown up and you’re supposed to have saved the world and maybe, just maybe, you kinda haven’t?”

In addition to the two main flicks (1989’s Excellent Adventure and 1991’s Bogus Journey), the Bill & Ted characters graced two TV adaptations; one animated and one live-action. Reeves and Winters provided the voices for the first season of the animated series.

In explaining why it’s taken 23-years to make a third flick Winters explained, “We’d be having dinner and we’d be like, ‘Is there a point? Is there a way in?’ We’d kick an idea around and go ‘no’ and we would leave it alone for a bunch of years. I guess about four years ago we had an idea together (“we” meaning; Reeves, Winter, and screenwriters Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon) and that we thought was pretty great. I think it was because so much time had gone by that it was great.”

“The thing we had going against us is that word got out,” Winter continued. “That was kind of a bummer. It just takes a long time to put a movie together. Now we’re having to build this thing in public, which is fine. I just feel bad they (the fans) have to get dragged through this long, boring, protracted process.”

Galaxy Quest director Dean Parisot is attached to the film as well. “We’ve been working on drafts for the last couple of years,” Winter said. “The script’s been finished for a while, but comedy is so specific. We’re in that world where producers are on, financiers are on and we’re just working and reworking the script.”

We guess this is great news for Gen X-ers and older Millennials — obsessed with 80s and 90s films as they are — alike. Will it be good? Well, was it ever? It will be, if nothing else.