“Speed 3”: “John Wick” star Keanu Reeves would be in the action film – on one condition
Andreas Rivera
March 22, 2023 7:06 am
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3 min read
What are the odds of “Speed 3” starring Keanu Reeves? The action star would not be averse. But only if something is 100 percent correct, as he says.
Quite a few Keanu Reeves fans who are in their 30s and 40s had their first real encounter with the actor in director Jan de Bont’s 1994 action film Speed, who would later up the ante with Twister.
The nerve-racking high-speed flick with a brutal action caliber, which you can stream via the Disney+ streaming service, left the audience bathed in sweat in the cinema seats and many a fan lost their heart to the Hollywood handsome that evening – according to the quote from the film , according to which relationships can arise from extreme situations.
But unlike the movie, which proclaimed that such relationships can’t last, which the sequel underpinned, fans’ love for Keanu Reeves has remained to this day — with the exception of a brief span in the late 2000s to mid-’00s 2010s.
Sure, even Keanu Reeves makes mistakes, not all of his film decisions were crowned with success. But he had a spot on one thing: instead of filming “Speed 2: Cruise Control” again with Jan de Bont and co-star Sandra Bullock, the 58-year-old took the opportunity to film the occult thriller “On behalf of the Teufels” alongside Al Pacino and Charlize Theron. Reeves even gave up part of his fee to enable those responsible to hire Pacino.
Maybe things would have looked very different if the screenplay for “Speed 2” hadn’t been a typical Hollywood quick-fire sequel, which only varies the formula from the first part and otherwise doesn’t have anything new to offer. Granted, Willem Dafoe was terrific as always, but the rest, even Sandra Bullock, could have been skipped. “The Devil’s Advocate” was a box office hit, “Speed 2” flopped mercilessly.
It’s now 29 years since audiences cheered on L.A.P.D. bomb disposalist Jack Traven, and Reeves has become a full-blown action star. His role as super killer John Wick in the eponymous quadrilogy has even supplanted the chosen one, Neo, from the “Matrix” films. The king is dead, long live the killer.
What are the chances of “Speed 3” with Reeves and Bullock then? Speed 2 may not have been the yellow of the egg, but legacy sequels are quite popular at the moment, albeit primarily in the horror genre. When asked about it by Access Hollywood, Reeves is at least open to returning. All it takes is “a great story, a great script,” the mime says. “John Wick: Chapter 4”, which will start in local cinemas on March 23, 2023, is great. In the video we spoke to the stars.
The “Speed” movies need Keanu Reeves
Director De Bont has a guess as to why “Speed 2” didn’t work back then. He was contractually obliged to do so, Bullock wanted to finance another film and had to act here for it. With Jason Patric as Alex Shaw, an attempt was made to fill the big gap that Reeves left. But there’s no replacing him, because there’s a way about him that’s hard to imitate and for which he’s been widely decried throughout his career as stoic and wooden: he’s awkward in a way, according to De Bont:
“Some of the first part was so hugely about him and that little awkwardness of him as a hero. And that awkwardness in that heroic position… it worked well for him, but not for other actors. And it’s really hard to recreate that feeling.”
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