Apparently there’s a lot of talk going around about Dennis Hopper appearing in a second sequel to Speed. Yes, that’s right. Despite the fact that his character was less attached to his head than is healthy by the end of Speed, apparently Hopper’s mad bomber is slated to appear in the third movie. So I’ll go out on a limb here and guess: Speed 3 is a prequel?
I mean, that’s the only thing that makes sense. I can’t imagine Keanu Reeves would want to do Speed 3 when he wouldn’t even do Speed 2. If all goes well, the Keanu Reeves backup, Jason Patric, won’t be available to do another Speed either, hopefully tied up with Watchmen. I promise Sandra Bullock probably isn’t interested… although she did do Miss Congeniality 2, so who knows. Yes, a prequel is about the only way that makes sense for Howard Payne to reappear.
The circulating rumors come from an interview with Hopper at Guardian Unlimited Film. The focus of the interview is more about Hopper and his appreciation of art (and himself as an artist). In fact, the article mentions Speed 3 as one of those projects Hopper won’t talk about, one of half a dozen films the actor will be appearing in this year. My question is, where did they get word about Hopper in Speed 3? I can’t find talk about it anywhere else that isn’t over a year old and rather unreliable. I mean anywhere - no word about another Speed or Hopper appearing in it.
Hopper’s best quote is that, "It's a river of shit from which I have tried to extract some gold." It’s hard to tell from the context whether he’s talking about Speed or his career as a whole, although I’d be more likely to attribute it to the latter. After all, if he is putting Speed 3 alongside other films like Flashback (a guility pleasure at best), Space Truckers and Waterworld, his career hasn’t exactly all been gold. Still, even in movies like these, Hopper has frequently been that diamond in the rough, or perhaps nugget of gold in a river of shit.
