Keanu Reeves And Alex Winter Are The Perfect Actors To Play Bill And Ted, And This Story Proves It
It’s always magical when an actor is matched to their perfect character, forbidding the possibility of the audience imagining anyone else ever playing the part, and in that sense the original casting process for Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure struck pure gold twice. As the titular duo, Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter established what are iconic roles, and the performances we’ve seen, both in the original and in the first sequel, Bill And Ted’s Bogus Journey are ones that we will never forget.
One could say it was destiny that the two actors would play the goofy best buds – and in a way Bill And Ted co-creator Ed Solomon confirmed as much today during the Comic-Con @ Home panel for the upcoming Bill And Ted Face The Music.
Hosted by Kevin Smith, the panel started by digging into the history of the series and its origins back in the 1980s, which was delivered with fun fact that the characters were initially created by Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson as personas they themselves took on before deciding that Bill And Ted could be the heroes of their own movie. Unfortunately, they lost a fair bit of control over the project as it started to head towards production, and, as Solomon described, this led to them standing in a McDonalds shortly before principal photography complaining about their vision being screwed with. Said the writer,
Evidently it was during this conversation that Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson’s attention was caught by a couple of guys ahead of them, and they had a moment of inspiration that turned out to be something like a message from the universe. Solomon continued:
It’s certainly not an uncommon thing to hear writers be upset about their work not being treated properly in Hollywood (it’s actually so common that it’s an industry joke), but rarely do those stories have such remarkably happy endings. But it just seems to perfect for Bill And Ted, which is just a series beaming with endless positivity that is best summed up in the great Abraham Lincoln quote, “Be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes!”
We here at CinemaBlend couldn’t be more thrilled to see the return of Bill And Ted, and our wait for that triumphant arrival is almost over. Bill And Ted Face The Music, starring Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, William Sadler, Samara Weaving, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Kristen Schaal, Anthony Carrigan, Erinn Hayes, Jayma Mays, Holland Taylor, Kid Cudi, Jillian Bell, and more, will be hitting select theaters and premium VOD on September 1st. Stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for news, updates, and a whole lot more between now and then!
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Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.