Thirty years on, stars Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves have said they’d be interested in making Speed 3. “We’d knock it out of the park,” Bullock enthused.
It’s almost exactly 30 years since director Jan de Bont made the corking action thriller Speed – better known to Homer Simpson as The Bus That Couldn’t Slow Down. All these decades later, the film’s co-stars, Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves, have expressed their interest in making a third film – though the way they talk about the prospect suggests they may not be entirely serious.
The pair briefly talked about a possible Speed 3 on the 50MPH podcast, as picked up by The Hollywood Reporter. Bullock immediately sounded keen on the idea, saying, “We’d freakin’ knock it out of the park.”
Reeves concurred. “It does feel like there’s a siren call to it,” he said, “like there’s something that wasn’t done.”
Speed was an unexpectedly huge success in 1994, making over 10 times its estimated $30m budget. As a result, de Bont was hastily roped in to make a sequel – 1997’s Speed 2: Cruise Control, which moved the action from a bomb-laden bus to an ocean-going liner. Sandra Bullock returned as the spritely Annie Porter; Reeves, his sixth sense twitching, declined to appear, and Jason Patric was helicoptered in as his replacement.
Read more: Ranking the Speed movies in order of quality
That sequel swiftly sank at the box office, and plans for a third film were dropped. Both Reeves and Bullock have enjoyed long and hugely successful careers since, though, with Reeves currently surfing on the success of his John Wick franchise, while Bullock has earned accolades for her roles in things like The Blind Side and Gravity.
In terms of the box office potential, then, a belated Speed sequel could make sense assuming someone can come up with a plausible story. Both actors have acknowledged the growing length of time since the first film, however, with an existential note creeping into their comments on the prospect of working together again.
“Before I die, before I leave this planet, I do think that Keanu and I need to do something in front of the camera,” Bullock said. “Are we, you know, in wheelchairs or with walkers? Maybe. Are we on little scooters at Disneyland?”
Keanu simply added, poetically, “I would love to work with you again before our eyes close.”
