The epic saga of Bill S. Preston, Esquire and Ted “Theodore” Logan had two perfect installments in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. There have been rumors of a third film for a while now, but nothing all that solid. Alex Winter appeared on The Nerdist podcast yesterday to promote his film Downloaded, but host Chris Hardwick also asked where things stood with Bill & Ted 3.
You can listen to the full interview, where Winter talks about Downloaded, his new documentary about the history of Napster over at The Nerdist. It’s an interesting talk about the ethics of digital culture, filesharing, and the entertainment industry, but the part that caught my attention was when Hardwick asked about Bill & Ted 3. Winter gave this response:
Here’s the reality of it. It’s just like, we kicked the idea around for a long time. It’s sort of how the whole thing came about even for [Chris Matheson] and [Ed Solomon], it was just like wacky ideas that they kicked around that then became a movie. Then the second one was suddenly, now they’re stuck with me and [Keanu Reeves] and the four of us were kicking shit around, and that became the second movie.
For like the last twenty years like whenever we’re hanging out we’re just kick ideas around, and then eventually we just hit one that we all thought, “Oh, we should actually do this. This is great.” And so we came up with a story. They went off and started working on a script, and then that kind of got leaked which is fair enough. So we had to start talking about it.
The Internet being what it is, it’s kind of like you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Like if you say nothing then the trolls just like destroy you. “We know this is happening! You’re a scumbag!”
Then if you say something they’re like, “Yeah, but it’s not happening so why did you say something?”
It’s like, ah whatever guys. So you can’t really do anything other than just induct people into the tedium that is getting a movie made. You know what I mean? Because it’s like the yes/no, up/down, that’s — welcome to show business. That’s how it works.
Downloaded took me 11 years to get made, so now you’re stuck on the ride with us for Bill & Ted 3. You asked for it, and now you’re on the ride. Sit back and enjoy the ride. That’s right — it goes up. It goes down. We’re making it. Then we’re not. It’s these guys. Then it’s those guys. Welcome to the movie business.
So maybe we’ll make it one day. Hopefully.
So there you go. Winter and Reeves seem to be on board, as well as the original writers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, but getting a movie produced is a tough business. The best way to summarize the situation seems to be to say that they’re trying to get Bill & Ted 3 made, but that’s a difficult process.
Hardwick followed up by asking if it was attached to a studio at this point, but Winters said it was not and that the four of them were just working on developing it at this point.
(via Nerdist, image via krupp)
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