Keanu Reeves teasing ‘Speed 3’ with Sandra Bullock

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Even though it is unlikely to happen, Keanu Reeves is certain that he and Sandra Bullock could make an entertaining third Speed movie.

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During a joint interview on the 50 MPH podcast to celebrate the action film’s 30th anniversary next month, Reeves, 59, said if they got back together to do Speed 3 “we’d freakin’ knock it out of the park.”

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The iconic blockbuster helped take both their careers to the next level when it was released on June 10, 1994. The duo later reunited in the 2006 romance-drama The Lake House, but Bullock hopes they work together again.

“There’s no formula. It just is,” Bullock, 59, said of their onscreen chemistry. “Before I die, before I leave this planet, I do think that Keanu and I need to do something in front of the camera. Are we, you know, in wheelchairs or with walkers? Maybe. Are we on little scooters at Disneyland?”

“It does feel like there is a siren call to it, like there’s something that wasn’t done,” Reeves added. “I would love to work with you again before our eyes close.”

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In Speed, Reeves played Jack Traven, a young police officer who must prevent a bomb exploding aboard a city bus by keeping its speed above 50 miles-per-hour. Bullock played Annie, one of the passengers who ends up taking the wheel after the bus driver is injured.

The film grossed over $350 million at the worldwide box office and a sequel was immediately greenlit. But only Bullock opted to return for 1997’s Speed 2: Cruise Control. The follow-up found Annie (Bullock) at the centre of another deadly plot with her new cop boyfriend (Jason Patric) after a crazed hacker (Willem Dafoe) hijacks a cruise liner during their vacation and sets it speeding on a collision course with a gigantic oil tanker.

The sequel was a critical and financial flop and in 2022 Bullock told a reporter from TooFab that she’s “still embarrassed I was in it.”

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“I have one that no one came around to, and I’m still embarrassed that I was in, it’s called Speed 2, and I’m very vocal about it. Makes no sense: slow boat, slowly going towards an island,” Bullock said when asked to recall a regrettable movie among her filmography. “That’s one that I wished I hadn’t done, and no fans came around that I know of, except for you. I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

Meanwhile, Reeves said he turned down a big payday to return for Speed 2 because he didn’t like the storyline.

“At the time, I didn’t respond to the script. I really wanted to work with Sandra Bullock, I loved playing Jack Traven, and I loved Speed, but an ocean liner? I had nothing against the artists involved, but at that time I had the feeling it just wasn’t right,” he told Graham Norton in 2021 (per CNN).

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His decision drew the ire of studio execs at Fox, and Reeves told GQ in 2019 that he didn’t work with the company again for over a decade.

“I didn’t work with (Fox) again until (2008’s) The Day the Earth Stood Still,” he said.

Reeves also told Jimmy Kimmel back in 2015 that he chose not to return because he couldn’t wrap his head around the plot of the sequel.

“I didn’t get to be in that. Well, I decided not to be in that,” he said at the time. “I loved working with (director) Jan de Bont and Sandra, of course. It was just a situation in life where I got the script and I read the script and I was like, ‘Ugh.’ It was about a cruise ship and I was thinking, ‘A bus, a cruise ship… Speed, bus, but then a cruise ship is even slower than a bus and I was like, ‘I love you guys, but I just can’t do it.’ “

mdaniell@postmedia.com

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