Orion Pictures
Whoa! Totally excellent! Bill and Ted's third big screen adventure is a go, and even has a release date.
Following years of reports about plans for a second sequel to the hit late '80s / early '90s franchise, Orion Pictures released on Wednesday a YouTube video showing stars Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter announcing the making of the new film, titled Bill and Ted Face the Music.
"Hi, I'm Alex Winters," Winter says.
"And I'm Keanu Reeves," Reeves says.
"And together, we are Wyld Stallyns!" they say in unison, referencing their slacker characters' band.
Standing at the Hollywood Bowl, where Winter notes they will "never play," the two say they hope to shoot Bill and Ted Face the Music this summer. The video states the movie is set for release on August 21, 2020.
"It is all because of you guys, and we owe you a huge debt of gratitude, and we want to say thank you," Winter says in the video. "Be excellent."
The 1989 sci-fi comedy movie Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure was about two dim-witted teenagers who use a time machine to bring back famous figures such as Socrates and Abraham Lincoln to use in a high school history class presentation. In the 1991 sequel Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, a tyrant from the future creates evil android doubles of Bill and Ted and sends them back in time to eliminate the originals. Both films featured late iconic comedian George Carlin.
In the third film, "the stakes are higher than ever for William 'Bill' S. Preston Esq. (Winter) and Theodore 'Ted' Logan (Reeves)," reads a synopsis posted by Deadline. "Yet to fulfill their rock and roll destiny, the now middle-aged best friends set out on a new adventure, when a visitor from the future warns them that only their song can save life as we know it and bring harmony to the universe. Along the way, they will be helped by their families, old friends and a few music legends."
Galaxy Quest director Dean Parisot will helm the project from a screenplay by original Bill & Ted writers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, the outlet said.
Fans had lobbied for a new Bill & Ted sequel for years, and in 2011, Reeves told MTV News, "I believe the writers are six weeks away from a draft."
"No pressure!" he added. "We'll see. When we last got together, part of it was that Bill and Ted were supposed to have written the song that saved the world, and it hasn't happened. So they've now become kind of possessed by trying to do that."
In 2014, Winter talked about the third Bill & Ted movie in an interview with Yahoo! Movies, saying "[Bill & Ted] will be 40-something and it's all about Bill and Ted grown up, or not grown up. It's really sweet and really f--king 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?"
"There's many versions of ourselves in this movie," he said. "[It's] answering the question: 'What happened to these guys?' They're supposed to have done all this stuff, they weren't the brightest bulbs on the tree, what happened 20 years later? To answer that question in a comedic way felt rich with possibility."