
“It was so audaciously ridiculous just by its very nature, but it also had heart,” recalls Bill & Ted legend Alex Winter, aka Bill S. Preston to Keanu Reeves’ Theodore “Ted” Logan, on the pitch writers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon originally gave the duo on a third film.
“The film was developed over about 10 years, so it gave us a lot of time to get everything where we wanted it. The first two movies had significant changes along the way, but I’d to think that after making these for 30 years, we’ve figured out how to do it,” he laughs.
For years following the excellent ending of 1991’s Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, the four of them were constantly quizzed on rumours of a follow-up, and then, finally, in March 2019, the greatest band of all-time, Wyld Stallyns, reunited in front of the Hollywood Bowl to make a special announcement:
Fast-forward a year later and the world was looking drastically different. The team behind Bill & Ted Face the Music had a big decision to make.
“When COVID hit, we had an option of just sticking this movie on a shelf for another year or two, at minimum,” Winter tells.
“It was really important for us to get it out to the fans. They’d waited a really long time. And because we’re a little movie, we’re not a big Marvel movie, there was no guarantee when we’d come out theatrically. We’d have to wait for all these other movies to have their releases that were much bigger than us. And so, we took a gamble and I think it really paid off.”
For those who weren’t able to venture out to the cinema during Bill & Ted Face the Music’s theatrical run, the totally bodacious threequel will have its Home Entertainment Release in Australia on December 9, and it’s a film that, despite being released while many were isolated, has really brought people together.
“Yeah, it was certainly not what we intended,” Winter notes. “The Bill & Ted movies are always about community and coming together and compassion and friendship, and also the unifying nature of music. So that was in there from the beginning.
“We did really lean into that once we were in a kind of pandemic climate… that entire finale sequence was done during the pandemic by people who were in quarantine. And so, that an aspect of the film that was impacted by what happened even on a creative level.”
When Face the Music’s plot was revealed, alongside news that Brigette Lundy-Paine and Australia’s own Samara Weaving and would be playing Bill and Ted’s daughters in the film, it completely unravelled the ending of Bogus Journey, with its synopsis reading “the now middle-aged best friends” are “yet to fulfill their rock-and-roll destiny” and the song they penned in the 1991 film didn’t actually save the world.
“The idea was to really lean into our families and to the idea that we were dads and husbands and what that meant to us as people,” Winter says.
“Who are these people? What had become of the Princesses? What had become of our kids? And that was a really fun thing to play with. And it was something that the writers did a really good job identifying.
“But it really, I have to say, was going to live or die in the casting. And I think it was probably the only thing Keanu and I were most nervous about going into the third movie, because it so much relied on things outside of our control.
“We ended up with Samara Weaving, who obviously you know from down there, who’s absolutely amazing and related to Hugo, which is hilarious unto itself, and Brigette Lundy-Paine.
“I was familiar with their work before the movie, but just in talking to them, it was clear they were building their own characters and weren’t trying to replicate who [Bill and Ted] were, so it was great.
“We marvelled at their performance because I think it rides a very fine line of creating unique characters, but also having a sense of who they came from. And what I liked about what they did, which is obviously very logical, is they really tried to create daughters who were their own people, who were influenced by their moms and their dads. So they’re not just Bill and Ted knockoffs, they have aspects of the Princesses in them.”
Although there were 29 years between Bogus Journey and Face the Music, it really doesn’t feel like a follow-up to the 1991 hit would have worked much sooner than 2020.
“We really felt it was done,” Winter reinforces. “We really felt the ending to the second one was so conclusive. But that was what I liked about Ed and Chris’ idea, is that it’s a comedy and it’s also life and life does not work out the way you think it’s going to, even when you have what is supposedly a destiny that is pre-ordained.
“The whole thing that had some fans nervous when we announced that they’re like, ‘How could you make a movie when the second one ended so concretely?’ That’s why it’s worth doing, because it means that things so radically did not go the way we all thought they did. That in itself is a place to start the next one from.”
While Winter is quick to praise his co-stars as well as Matheson and Solomon, he also shows extreme gratitude towards the fans.
“We got to make this movie because of fan support,” he enthuses. “Most studios did not want to make any of the movies, to be honest with you. They’ve always been underdogs, and there was very little interest in this idea when we first came out with the first script, for number three, but the fans caught wind of it and they went nuts and they were very vocal about their desire for a third. And that’s what eventually got us finance.”
So, if the fans rally again will there be a fourth instalment in the Bill & Ted franchise?
“Gosh, I have no idea,” Winter laughs. “I’ve got to be honest with you, I’m so flipping tired.”
Bill & Ted Face the Music will release on Home Entertainment in Australia on December 9.