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“We have to get the script in the right place” to get the movie made, Reeves said in an interview with ComingSoon.net. “Chris and Ed have been working really hard over a couple of years to get the draft in the right place. What is the reason to make this movie besides nostalgia or the love of these characters. Where can they be in their life that can be a story that is worth telling or has something in it and is funny? They have that. 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.”
The notion of the pair carrying a tentpole-style budget is one that has come up ever since the most recent draft turned into a kind of sci-fi, time-travel opera. This isn’t the first time Reeves has expressed doubts about raising the necessary funds.
Most of the interview was nominally about Passengers, but there was a lot of Bill & Ted talk, as is wont to happen these days. Here’s the big that’s pertinent to everyone’s favorite slackers.
CS: The director you guys picked out originally, Dean Parisot (Galaxy Quest) was a great choice. Is he still involved?
Reeves: Yeah, Dean’s re-read it and I think he likes it. It’s kind of like… I call it “gravity,” you have to get this mass together to make it happen. In terms of the writers’ voices being too peculiar, in this case no. I think they’ve really crafted something that’s funny. [Bill and Ted have] been weighed down by the burden of having to save the world by the song, and they just can’t write it. They’re losing their wives and their children, they’re losing their families.CS: Just getting too wrapped up in their own dilemma?
Reeves: Yeah, they’re just like, “Dude, we have to write the song!” The future comes back and says if you don’t write the song by this certain time the universe is going to unravel and history and everything is going to change and dinosaurs are gonna walk the Earth. Jesus is playing baseball! All sorts of weird things start unraveling and wormholes are twisting. We have to kind of bring order back, and it’s connected into bringing our families together by writing a song.CS: Obviously you don’t want to homogenize that to the point where it’s not even worth doing anymore.
Reeves: No! I mean, it’s edgy. 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 f**ked up. They’re miserable and they hate Bill and Ted. There’s some funny stuff!
Solomon was recently attached to the Amazing Spider-Man franchise, but persistent rumors have it that all the work on those movies is being rethought before Sony moves forward, and that Venom, on which he was a writer, may be dead again.
