‘Speed’ Writer Had Idea for Sequel on Different Vehicle, With Keanu Reeves
When Keanu Reeves decided not to do Speed sequel, it probably sealed the Speed 2: Cruise Control’s fate. It didn’t help that it was a bad idea and not very well executed. The original writer of Speed, Graham Yost, had his own ideas for two Speed sequels, and he thinks Reeves would’ve done them.
Yost was a guest on the Script Apart podcast on Aug. 17, 2021 discussing his screenplay for the original Speed. Here are the Speed sequels we never got to see, thanks to Speed 2: Cruise Control ruining it for everybody.
The director of ‘Speed’ kicked the original writer off the sequel
Acclaimed cinematographer Jan de Bont made his directorial debut with Speed. When the movie was a hit, Yost said he came up with sequels, including a similar boat pitch and a very different airplane one. But, De Bont wanted to do the cruise ship so that’s what they went with.
“I had pitches,” Yost said on Script Apart. “Oh no, I had one on a boat that was going to be called Full Speed and one on a plane that was going to be called High Speed. No, I had all these other ideas. By that point, Jan was the star and he was the auteur. So he got to call the shots and he wanted to do it without me. He had a good experience with Joss [Whedon] but Joss didn’t work on it. My glib line at the time was I was not invited to a party I didn’t want to go to. It was just not a good movie.”
Both ‘Speed’ sequel pitches could’ve attracted Keanu Reeves
Yost was going to wait until Speed 3 to go airborne, but it sounds awesome.
“High Speed was another bad guy and you can’t drop below 10,000 ft,” Yost said. “You’re running out of fuel and you’re headed into the Andes. Now what do you do?”
Even his boat pitch sounds more exciting than Speed 2.
“Full Speed was going to be transporting munitions left over from the Vietnam War on a boat in the Pacific Ocean and they hit a storm,” Yost said. “But they find out it’s got phosphorus in it and if water hits it, it’s going to blow up.”
Graham Yost wanted to pitch another movie to Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock
Yost went on to create the TV series Justified but he continued to write action movies like Justified and The Last Castle. He even considered making his script for Hard Rain another Jack and Annie adventure.
“Mark Gordon and I did a film that was not that successful unfortunately that we called The Flood and came out as Hard Rain with Christian Slater and Morgan Freeman,” Yost said. “We actually, when we had that idea, we pitched it to Fox. What if this is Jack and Annie, so it’s not a speed related thing. They’re going back to visit her family in the midwest and they get caught up in this thing. They said, ‘No, we’re doing what Jan wants to do,’ and then Keanu wouldn’t do it.”
Hard Rain is awesome and you should see it, but it would also make sense to have Reeves and Sandra Bullock in that scenario. More recently, Yost approached Reeves with a Speed 3 idea.
8 years ago, Mark and his team, we kicked around ideas for a Speed 3 and we even talked to Keanu about it. He was ehhh. I think part of it is, I’ll be honest, which is there was a feeling of sadness and burnout that Speed 2 was such a bad film. It killed the franchise if it was a possible franchise. I think that it saved us from killing it ourselves because Mark and I would’ve come up with something, whether it’s High Speed or Full Speed or something else. It just wouldn’t have been as good because he’s not James Bond, he’s not Bourne, he’s not Ethan Hunt. It’s not that kind of transportable character. It was the whole experience of it and to try and repeat that would feel like it was repeating it. That said, if I got a shot to work with Keanu and Sandy again, absolutely.
Graham Yost, Script Apart, 8/17/21
