Speed Creator Wants A Third Movie To Do The Exact Same Thing
The original Speed writer wants to make a Speed 3, where everything stays the same as in the first Speed, except this time they go 60 mph.
In 1994 Keanu Reeves starred in a movie about a bus that couldn’t go slower than 55mph or else an explosive planted somewhere on the vehicle would detonate. The movie was called Speed, and it launched the career of Sandra Bullock and cemented Reeves as one of the 1990s hottest action stars. Now, according to ComicBook.com, original Speed scribe Graham Yost wants a Speed 3 where everything stays the same, except this time, Keanu Reeves must stop the bus from going below 60.
Yost originally teased his idea for a third Speed film in 1997 after Speed 2: Cruise Control bombed with both critics and audiences. Rather than take the poor box office performance Speed 2 as a sign that audiences weren’t down for multiple movies about vehicles that explode if they slow down, Yost doubled down and suggested making Speed 3 a remake of the original starring Keanu Reeves where everything is the same but the bus has to go slightly faster.
Now that Keanu Reeves has recently confirmed that he would be willing to revisit the Speed franchise if “the script was good enough,” Yost is again talking about his super derivative concept for Speed 3. “My old joke for Speed 3 was, ‘This time, it’s 60,’ and that’s it,” Yost said following Keanu Reeves’ announcement.
The writer went on to compare further Speed movies to the current popular Keanu Reeves franchise, John Wick. “Each one is the same movie basically, but they’re great,” Yost said of the Wick series, adding that he enjoys the films and their brutality. While the core of John Wick–John Wick kicks butt in increasingly cool ways–is the same throughout every installment, there is definitely enough variety in the story and settings to justify several sequels.
Compare that with the central concept of Speed–a bus can’t explode, or it will go boom–and you can see how it doesn’t call for a Speed 2, let alone a Speed 3.
That’s because some movies have a story and a universe that beg for further exploration, like Star Wars or any Marvel or DC movie. On the flip side are movies like Snakes on a Plane or Speed that revolve around a very specific gimmick that really only require one movie. That’s not to say that other high-concept movies like Home Alone and The Hangover haven’t managed to spawn successful sequels despite just repeating the same formula, but with each sequel, it gets harder and harder to convincingly set up situations where the exact same thing happens again.
The reason the original Speed sequel Cruise Control wasn’t a hit was that nobody walked out of the original, thinking, “I wonder what happens to Sandra Bullock’s character next.” Would Speed 2 have done better if Keanu had been involved? Possibly. The only way to find out would be to make Yost’s Speed 3 with Keanu Reeves and see what happens.
While Yost obviously made the tongue-in-cheek pitch as a joke, he might be on to something. In today’s world of nostalgia-driven legacy sequels, a Speed 3 starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock could make a lot of money.
