SPEED by Keanu Reeves was originally conceived as a sequel to THE BEVERLY HILLS COUPLE

The 1994 action movie Speed it’s one of those ’90s movies you can’t help but look back on fondly. He was the epitome of 90s movies and he acted Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, Dennis HopperAND Jeff Daniels.

The story centered on a city bus that was rigged by a terrorist to explode if its speed drops below 50mph, and Reeves ends up being the cop who has to save the day.

The producer of the film Mark Gordon and former Vice President of Production at Paramount Don Granger he recently appeared on the 50 MPH podcast and that’s where he revealed it Speed was initially launched as a sequel to Beverly Hills Policeman! gordon said:

“They probably thought it was kind of a silly idea. You know, when you think about the idea of ​​a bus, if you go below 50 the bus is going to blow up, that could be really silly, you know? And I think ultimately, the thing that it made it a little silly was what made it great. It wasn’t completely grounded in reality. The characters were grounded, but it was also funny. Graham [Yost] he is a very funny writer. I think he had the right level of fun and some sort of popcorn, but he was also brutal. There was violence in it. So, we never got to the point of setting a budget or having actual conversations. It had just been put into turnaround 8 and they just said, you know, ‘Here, we’re not doing this movie. Good luck.'”

Granger added:

“I really wanted to try and edit the film, and my last ditch effort was pitching it at our president’s luncheon as a possible script for Beverly Hills Cop 3. I had about 15 minutes of traction before it was scrapped, because that was when the mandate was finding a Beverly Hills Cop 3, so I thought, ‘Let’s put Axel Foley on the bus.’ It was a Hail Mary, man. I could argue it was a better movie, it would have been a better movie than what we ended up getting for Beverly Hills Cop 3, but that was my last Hail Mary.

This could have actually worked like a Beverly Hills Policeman movie! But luckily the studio shut down the idea because it led to the ’90s masterpiece it became. It would have been a very different kind of movie with Eddie MurphyThere’s Axel Foley on that bus! I’m not entirely convinced they would have made it out alive.

The film also helped establish Reeves as an action hero and was Bullock’s breakout role. The movie had to play out the way it did, in order for everything to work out the way the universe needed it to.