Keanu Reeves is more than confident that he and Sandra Bullock could pull off a third “Speed” movie. Jan de Bont’s action thriller “Speed” became the fourth highest-grossing movie of 1994 with $350 million worldwide, largely in part due to the sizzling chemistry between Reeves and Bullock. The film turned the two actors into one of the decade’s iconic screen duos; they reunited onscreen in 2006 for the romance drama “The Lake House.”
During a joint interview on the “50 MPH” podcast, Reeves had this to say about “Speed 3”: “I mean, you know — we’d freakin’ knock it out of the park.”
“There’s no formula. It just is,” Bullock said of their screen presence together. “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.”
Whether or not Reeves and Bullock’s next collaboration is “Speed 3” remains to be seen. Only Bullock returned for the 1997 sequel “Speed 2: Cruise Control,” which was an infamous box office and critical flop. Bullock told TooFab in 2022 that “I’m still embarrassed I was in it.”
“That’s one I wished I hadn’t done and no fans came around that I know of, except for you,” Bullock added at the time.
Reeves turned down “Speed 2” because of the screenplay, telling Graham Norton in 2021: “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,”
Back together again on the “50 MPH” podcast, which recounts the making of “Speed,” Reeves and Bullock both agreed that creating chemistry on set of the action thriller became effortless.
“We had an affection,” Reeves said. “And the characters themselves have an affection. I think Jack and Annie’s is different than Sandra’s and Keanu’s, but I think we played off each other and I think it was just fun. I think, also, we kind of trusted each other, right?”
“Yeah. I mean, people have full-blown affairs in movies, and you don’t feel something between them. And then people can hate each other in movies and you go, ‘That was electric,’ you know?” Bullock said. “We didn’t really look at each other in this movie except for maybe three or four times, because we were constantly battling the elements. And I think that’s what made it so electric, too, is that, watching it, I guess you want them to connect. That was a really clever setup, to sort of keep people apart. Foreplay, I guess.”
“But I felt very comfortable with Keanu,” she continued. “There was nothing that I couldn’t try or do or say that he wouldn’t have, I felt, fought for me to do or say or try, and that kind of trust is very rare with actors. Anytime I threw something his way, he swatted it right back and you just go, ‘Okay, there’s my partner.’”
Listen to Reeves and Bullock’s full episode of the “50 MPH” podcast here.
