Regulators, mount up! It’s been 37 years since Emilio Estevez first saddled up as the infamous American outlaw William H. Bonney, AKA Billy the Kid, in the original Young Guns alongside April Supa-Star guest Lou Diamond Phillips, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen, Dermot Mulroney and Casey Siemaszko. However, despite 1990’s Young Guns II providing the opening for another gun-slinging Wild West adventure, coupled with rumours that Estevez would return for a threequel shortly after the second movie’s release, plans for a potential Young Guns 3 never materialised.

That was, at least, until Estevez announced in March 2025 that not only did he have a script ready to go for the long-anticipated threequel, dubbed Young Guns 3: Dead or Alive, but he also intends to bring back Phillips as José Chávez y Chávez and Christian Slater as his Young Guns II character, “Arkansas” Dave Rudabaugh. With Chávez himself set to mosey on into town for Supanova on the Gold Coast (11-12 April 2026) and in Melbourne (18-19 April 2026), we thought it might be timely to look at Estevez’s plans for a reunion of his beloved Regulators.

Estevez has already revealed that the new movie’s title is a deliberate nod to Bon Jovi’s 1987 single Wanted Dead or Alive. As such, Young Guns 3: Dead or Alive is somewhat of a full-circle moment, given that Estevez had first approached Jon Bon Jovi to use the track on the soundtrack for Young Guns II. While that song would not end up being featured in the finished movie, Bon Jovi composed the now-iconic Blaze of Glory for him instead.

So how does Estevez plan to bring his version of Billy the Kid back, along with both Phillips’ Chavez and Slater’s Rudabaugh?

While Young Guns II saw Estevez assume the persona of “Brushy Bill” Roberts, an elderly alias of Bonney who told the story of how he escaped his reported death at the hands of Sheriff Pat Garrett, when audiences last saw Phillips’ Chavez, he was not in such good form. Having been fatally wounded in a shootout, Chavez leaves his gang behind to meet his fate alone. Meanwhile, Slater’s Rudabaugh does manage to escape in Mexico, though the movie’s epilogue explains that he was later captured and beheaded as a warning to other outlaws.

Despite this, however, during an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Estevez insisted that “we didn’t see either of them die on camera.” Moreover, the star also intimated that there may even be more sequels on the horizon beyond Dead or Alive, also going as far as to suggest that “if you wanna continue the narrative of the Brushy Bill story, there’s a potential for three, four, five.”

Yet reuniting Billy the Kid with his two former gang members is not all that audiences should expect, with the actor and director also intimating that audiences will meet a whole new generation of Regulators, with Billy now taking the mentorship role once fulfilled by Terence Stamp’s John Tunstall in the first movie. However, all this will now take place on “the eve of the Mexican Revolution” that first began in 1910. Given that the events of Young Guns II largely took place in 1881, culminating in Billy’s supposed death at the hands of Pat Garrett, this new backdrop provides a nearly perfect mirror for the real time that has passed between the second movie and the third.

At this stage, however, it is not yet clear when Estevez will actually begin production on the new movie, though he did make an appearance at the New Mexico State Capitol in March last year to reveal that he will be returning to the state to film the third film in the same place where the original movie was shot.

In the meantime, fans will have their chance to get up close and personal with José Chávez y Chávez himself when Lou Diamond Phillips rides on in, in a blaze of glory, for Supanova on the Gold Coast (11-12 April 2026) and in Melbourne (18-19 April 2026).