Keanu Still Isn't Positive 'Bill & Ted 3' Will Happen

Even after landing a director and a studio, then releasing a title and plot synopsis to the press, Keanu Reeves remains unsure whether the third Bill & Ted movie is really as close as it seems to going into production.

Bill & Ted Face the Music was expected to go into production in late 2018 or early 2019, but Reeves remains skeptical, since getting a studio to pony up the bigger budget for the third film has been the sticking point for years now.

"I don't know if it's a reality. We've been trying for a long time to get that film made, and it still has its challenges," Reeves told Yahoo! Movies. "I really love the characters, and I think we have a good story to tell. Part of it is show business stuff — financing, rights, deals. Nothing creatively."

Ed Solomon, who wrote the original movie, has already turned in a screenplay for Face the Music, which centers on an older Bill and Ted feeling that time is no longer on their side as they struggle to write the world-changing music Rufus (George Carlin) promised them they were destined to make. Reeves and Winter had said that Carlin, who died in 2008, will appear in a sort of stylized flashback, using footage from the first movie.

The actor, who has been trying to get Face the Music made for years, says that even now he is still considering how he will play an aging Ted Logan, who in the first two films was a font of youthful ignorance and enthusism.

"It'll be interesting to see what that's like," Reeves said. "There'd be a lot about him that would be the same, I'm sure; his kind of optimistic naïveté in the face of the darkness will still be there. He has a child now, so I'm sure he's matured."

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure was a box office hit upon its release, but both Orion and MGM -- the two studios most closely involved with the film -- have had money problems for years. Neither Excellent Adventure nor its less-beloved follow-up Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey were international hits, which means the prospect of dumping $50 million or so into a movie that continues a story many mainstream fans have not thought about for a quarter century.

Such a movie may be an easier sell if Blade Runner 2049, a long-awaited and fan-demanded follow-up to a cult hit from 30 years ago, had done better at the box office.

More details on Bill & Ted Face the Music as they become available.