Something tells me that, no matter how good or well-liked The Day the Earth Stood Still winds up being, it's not going to inspire some national desire to see more of Keanu Reeves. But Fox, ever hopeful, is hoping to trot their star back out for the role that made him famous-- well, famous as someone other than an airhead traveling in a phone booth.
Yes, dear God, they're considering a Speed 3-- sorta. Ain't It Cool has it from a trusted source that Fox wants another go-round on the speedy bus, except it wouldn't be a sequel or remake so much as a kind of prequel. 'There's a scriptment floating around that reintroduces Jack Traven. So the studios are hoping to get Keanu back on board." So maybe earlier in his career he had to slow down a parade? A horde of excitable Christmas shoppers?
Regardless of your feelings on Keanu Reeves or the original Speed (let's leave Speed 2 out of this for now), can we all agree that Keanu was not what made that movie great? Do they really think that just bringing back the character, a big bland blank slate if there ever was one, will recapture the magic? I know I'm just getting myself worked up over nothing, and i can't keep this from happening if' it's for real, but some part of my 10-year-old self who loved Speed feels betrayed by the world right now.
UPDATE! - Oddly enough we got a similar scoop email last night, long before AICN posted theirs with above information. Since AICN can't give their source's name (and we can't either), we have no way to know if it’s the same person or if this is a second, independent confirmation. But from the way they describe the email, it sounds similar. The big difference is that when he emailed us, the kindhearted scooper in question dropped this tidbit: Jan de Bont, director of the original Speed, is out. He says, “Jan won't touch it with a five foot pole though - they offered it to him a while ago.” That’s particularly important because according to our scooper that is “going to make it harder for the studio to get Keanu Reeves back.”
It’s all just rumor of course, literally anyone could have sent those emails to us or AICN. We’ll let you know when there’s some sort of official confirmation. - JT
