MOVIE NEWS – Don Granger, the former head of Paramount, revealed that Keanu Reeves’ famous action film, Speed, was almost made as a franchise continuation of another action crime series.

A former Paramount executive has revealed that before Keanu Reeves’ career in action movies really took off, Speed was originally conceived as part of the Beverly Hills Cop franchise. In the 1994 film, Reeves stars as an LAPD firefighter and detective who rides a bus that is rigged with a bomb that detonates immediately if the vehicle’s speed drops below 50 mph. In the Beverly Hills Cop series, Eddie Murphy plays Axel Foley, a fast-talking Detroit detective who often gets involved in various cases in the film’s titular Californian city.

The idea of a bus exploding if its speed drops below 50 mph might be considered humorous on paper. But if this idea is handled by the right experts, it can make for an extremely exciting story. The film created based on the work of Jan de Bont, the award-winning cinematographer of Die Hard and The Hunt for Red October, and screenwriter Graham Yost – who later became the creator of the Justified series – was truly anxiety-inducing. It was praised by audiences and critics alike, and the film grossed over $350 million against its budget of just $37 million.

Considering the comedic elements of the Beverly Hills cop series, adapting the idea of Speed as an Axel Foley-led sequel would probably have reduced the excitement of the film and upset the success formula that characterized the first two action comedies. In Beverly Hills cop movies, the source of humor is largely the dynamic between the characters, which sometimes seems crazy. Murphy, on the other hand, gave an outstanding performance against the tense Californians with opposite characters. However, trapping Axel Foley’s character on a bus would have prevented Murphy’s signature humor and fundamentally limited the scope of the jokes.

The other argument that Speed was better off not being a sequel to Beverly Hills Cop also comes up in Granger’s comments. According to this, Paramount has given the nod to make a third part of the franchise. This sequel not only meant a seven-year wait for Murphy, but led to the critically disliked Beverly Hills Cop III, during which Murphy reportedly fell into a state of depression and later distanced himself from the film. Since the shooting of the movie Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley ended at the end of 2022, we can hope that the series can get back on the road to success with the fourth part.

Unbridled is currently available on the Disney Plus streaming channel in 4K (UHD) resolution.

Source: ScreenRant