Fans React to 'Bill & Ted Face the Music' Release Date News

Earlier today, Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter appeared in front of the Hollywood Bowl to announce a tentative release date for Bill & Ted Face the Music, the third film in a franchise that has been on ice for more than 25 years. Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey hit theaters in 1991, two years after Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, and despite spawning a litany of toys, cartoons, and comic books, the Bill & Ted franchise showed no signs of coming back for years after that. In recent years, though, Reeves, Winter, and original Bill & Ted screenwriter Ed Solomon have talked more and more about trying to get a third (and presumably final) film off the ground.

Bill & Ted Face the Music will deal with Bill and Ted's mid-life crisis after the pair realize that the world-changing song they were destined to write has not yet come. Early in the process, it was described as the most effects-heavy and science-fiction-y of all of the Bill & Ted movies, and one of the early obstacles was finding funding for the film, which was originally produced by the currently cash-strapped MGM and by Orion Pictures, who went bankrupt and whose logo only recently started appearing on new movies after more than 15 years away. Those rights issues never really "stopped" a movie from being made, but certainly did not help what was already a difficult sell.

After all, while the Bill & Ted brand had made a ton of money for MGM over the years, the movies themselves were hits largely on the strength of low budgets. Each made around $40 million, which was a solid profit on the low cost of production, but when you start talking about making a more ambitious film that could cost quite a bit more than the originals, studios can get understandably skittish. It is, as Reeves and Winter noted in their video today, the fans and their constant drumbeat for a sequel that really seem to have created the necessary enthusiasm for the movie. And now, as it enters production this summer, those fans are reacting...