Keanu Reeves' SPEED Was Originally Pitched as a BEVERLY HILLS COP Sequel

The 1994 action movie Speed is one of those films from the ‘90s that you can’t help but look back on with fondness. It was the epitome of ‘90s movies, and it starred Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, Dennis Hopper, and Jeff Daniels.

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

The film’s producer Mark Gordon and former Paramount vice president of production Don Granger recently appeared on the 50 MPH Podcast and it’s there he revealed that Speed was initially pitched as a sequel to Beverly Hills Cop! Gordon said:

"They probably thought it was kind of a goofy idea. You know, when you think about the idea of a bus, if you drop below 50 the bus is going blow up, that could be really silly, you know? And I think that ultimately the thing that made it kind of silly was the thing that made it terrific. It was not grounded completely in reality. The characters were grounded, but it was also funny. Graham [Yost] is a very funny writer. I think it had just the right level of fun and sort of popcorn-ness, but also, it was brutal. There was violence in it. So, we never got to the point of budgeting or having any real conversations. It was 8 just put into turnaround and they just said, you know, 'Here you go, we're not going to make this film. Good luck with it.'"

Granger added:

"I really wanted to try to mount the movie, and my last-ditch effort was I pitched it at our chairman's lunch as a possible script for Beverly Hills Cop 3. I got about 15 minutes of traction before it was dismissed, because that was back when the mandate was to find a Beverly Hills Cop 3 so I was like, 'Let's put Axel Foley on the bus.' It was a Hail Mary, man. I might maintain it was a better movie, it would have been a better movie than ultimately what we got for Beverly Hills Cop 3, but that was my final Hail Mary.”

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

The film also helped establish Reeves as an action hero and was Bullock's breakout role. The movie needed to happen the way it did so that everything worked out the way the universe needed it to.