FADE IN:

EXT. WEDDING

ALEX WINTER and KEANU REEVES are performing at a WEDDING.

ALEX WINTER

How’s it going, folks? Hey, remember how our last movie ended with a bunch of newspaper headlines and magazine covers showing our band skyrocketing to all-time legendary status, and starting to build world peace, end pollution, and create unity across the galaxy? Well turns out all that stuff only happened for like a couple of years before everybody lost interest in our music, the band broke up, and we wound up broke washed-up footnotes of musical history, pathetically struggling to fulfil a destiny which seems increasingly unlikely to ever happen.

KEANU REEVES

So yeah, it’s not QUITE a Zoolander 2-level punch to the dick, but it’s in the ballpark.

ALEX WINTER

We’re here to celebrate the wedding of Amy Stoch to Keanu’s little brother, now that she’s completed her transition from horny jailbait to horny cougar. And we also want to debut our latest attempt at THE SONG! Yes, the one song that we’re supposed to record which will unite all of humanity, and which wasn’t a thing in either of the previous movies!

KEANU REEVES

We’ve been trying to figure out THE SONG for decades. We didn’t find it in rock, metal, pop, jazz, country, country rock, rap, classical, new country, calypso, minimalism, serialism, country folk, Kansas City blues, psychobilly, K-pop, afrobeat, dangdut, alternative country, or chutney parang. But here’s hoping we’ve finally cracked it on attempt #2,189 with our foray into experimental neotraditional dark-ambient art music! O SUUUPERMAAAANNN...

They perform an ENIGMATIC TONE POEM using THROAT SINGING, THEREMIN, BAGPIPES, OCARINA, HURDY-GURDY, CALLIOPE, DOUBLE CONTRABASS FLUTE, CRWTH, and HYDRAULOPHONE, before KEANU’S DAD charges in and SMASHES EVERYTHING WITH AN AXE.

ALEX WINTER

What the hell dude?! That was totally on track to be a Best Original Song nominee in an alternate better universe.

HAL LANDON, JR.

Damnit guys, when are you gonna give this up and get real jobs? And don’t give me that “saving the future” crap! You don’t still believe you actually time-travelled or went to Heaven and Hell, do you? What absurd bullshit!

KEANU REEVES

Um, you do know that our band used to feature robots, aliens, and the Grim Reaper?

HAL LANDON, JR.

Nobody seems to have registered that, somehow.

Dejected, ALEX and KEANU go home, where they are greeted by their daughters SAMARA WEAVING and BRIGETTE LUNDY-PAINE.

KEANU REEVES

Wow, Brigette is sure doing an amazing imitation of my distinctive "Ted" mannerisms! WAY better than, say, I am.

ALEX WINTER

And Samara sure is, um, cast as my daughter! Damn, I should have given Bill some more distinct mannerisms.

BRIGETTE LUNDY-PAINE

Don’t worry, Dads! We still believe in you!

SAMARA WEAVING

To a slightly disturbing degree in fact! To the point that it kinda seems like the only thing we do with our lives is worship you guys!

ALEX WINTER

Wait a minute. Weren’t our kids... boys? Pretty sure I remember that.

SAMARA WEAVING

Nope, they decided that this time we should probably have one or two female characters with any degree of screentime or characterization, so it turns out Little Bill and Little Ted were just a couple of weirdly-named girls all along.

BRIGETTE LUNDY-PAINE

Luckily post-"Hamilton", the name Theodora is cool now!

KEANU REEVES

Wouldn’t it have been simpler to have given our existing love interests actual personalities at last?

SAMARA WEAVING

Yeah, I think the ship sailed on that a looong time ago. To demonstrate, check out this next scene:

INT. THERAPIST’S OFFICE

ALEX and KEANU and their wives ERRIN HAYES and JAYMA MAYS go to COUPLES THERAPY.

ERRIN HAYES AND JAYMA MAYS

We’re fed up with the way you two don’t treat us as individuals, Alex and Keanu! You act as though the both of you are in some kind of quadrouple with an indistinct two-headed woman-shaped blob!

ALEX WINTER

So wait. These movies are self-aware enough now to point out how indistinct from each other you guys have always been, while at the same time we’re just gonna... still do that?

ERRIN HAYES AND JAYMA MAYS

Eh, if it ain’t broke.

Suddenly, KRISTEN SCHAAL appears in a TIME TRAVEL EGG and whisks ALEX and KEANU away to THE FUTURE.

EXT. THE FUTURE

They arrive at a FUTURE where everything is an IPHONE made out of WEDDING CAKE.

KRISTEN SCHAAL

I’m the daughter of George Carlin, who you’re only just now finding out is dead but don’t worry nobody expects you to react or anything. Look, here’s a three-second hologram of him to appease fans.

GEORGE CARLIN

Greetings! Bowling isn't a sport because you have to rent the shoes.

(vanishes)

KRISTEN takes ALEX and KEANU to meet CARLIN’S WIDOW and PRESIDENT OF EARTH, HOLLAND TAYLOR.

HOLLAND TAYLOR

We’ve brought you here because time is falling apart! Historical figures are randomly being zapped from time period to time period, which you’d think would completely alter the timeline but nope!

KEANU REEVES

Bummer. Why is this happening?

HOLLAND TAYLOR

We never address it. It just is for the sake of this movie having a plot.

ALEX WINTER

Say, you don’t suppose that rampant time-travel and constant abduction of historical figures might have had anything to do with space-time getting swiss cheesed?

HOLLAND TAYLOR

I’M SURE THAT’S A TOTAL COINCIDENCE. Anyway, our research suggests that THE SONG is what stopped/will stop the timesplosion. That’s why you guys are important to the future, you perform a song which stops reality disintegrating.

KEANU REEVES

Huh? That’s why we’re important? Not because our whole body of music forged galactic peace and became the foundation upon which all future civilization was based?

HOLLAND TAYLOR

Nope nope nope, we’re retconning allll of that right down the shitter. Now instead of you being the ultimate music legends of all time, now your whole deal is that future archaeologists found a vague reference that two humans with your surnames sang a song once.

ALEX WINTER

Well that’s a huge fucking bummer for our characters, especially considering the pretty obvious twist you just unsubtly hinted at.

HOLLAND TAYLOR

We’ve been waiting decades for you to create THE SONG, but your band just got crappier and crappier, and now you’re supposed to sing tonight and you still got nothing! And you can’t go back in time to like a month beforehand to give yourselves more time, because of that confusing “clock always running in San Dimas” bullshit.

(hands them instruments)

So yeah, write the song that fixes time and unites all humanity. You’ve failed for twenty years, but I figure a couple more hours ought to be plenty of time to crack it. Bye.

(leaves)

KEANU REEVES

...Might have been a good idea for them to tell us all that a couple weeks earlier at least.

ALEX WINTER

Dude, don’t sweat it, they conveniently left us in the same room as our old phone booth time machine!

KEANU REEVES

Oh, right! We can use the same “decide to go back in time later” gimmick and send ourselves the song later. It’s probably taped to the back of one of these guitars or something right now, let’s check.

ALEX WINTER

Nah, that may be the tactic which won the movie for us both previous times, but let’s shake it up and go forward in time and steal the song from our future selves. That way we have less time to learn the song and more chance of dooming the entire universe.

They travel CENTURIES BACK IN TIME to the FUTURE. Time travel can be WEIRD like that.

INT. BAR, 2022

ALEX and KEANU find SLIGHTLY FUTURE ALEX and SLIGHTLY FUTURE KEANU playing an OPEN MIC at some BAR.

SLIGHTLY FUTURE ALEX WINTER

Tough luck, dudes! As you can see we never did figure out THE SONG, and we’re bigger losers than ever.

ALEX WINTER

Oh, so THE SONG was never performed, but then the spacetime continuum didn’t collapse in on itself? Events kept happening and civilization kept running? Kinda sounds like there’s no problem, then.

SLIGHTLY FUTURE KEANU REEVES

But we’re pissed at you guys! Your continued fuckuppery made our wives walk out on us, which seems to have turned us into assholes!

KEANU REEVES

Oh no! We’d better time travel back to couples therapy to fix this right away! Rather than, say, AFTER fixing the undelayable timepocalypse.

They go back and talk to ERRIN and JAYMA, who respond by jumping in their own TIME MACHINE with their own FUTURE SELVES and going on a TOUR of VARIOUS POSSIBLE FUTURES.

KEANU REEVES

Hey, that sounds like a fun sideplot that could finally make those characters at least a little bit interesting!

ALEX WINTER

True! Let’s give it a cumulative twenty seconds of screentime over the course of the rest of the movie.

They hop back into the TIME MACHINE and travel FURTHER into their own FUTURE.

EXT. FUTURE

Meanwhile, centuries later, HOLLAND and KRISTEN have realized that ALEX and KEANU have bailed on them.

HOLLAND TAYLOR

Well fuck it then, there’s a different interpretation of our little prophecy that maybe the time glitches are solved by Alex and Keanu dying, however that’s supposed to work. I’m gonna send a cyborg to murder them.

KRISTEN SCHAAL

Seriously?

HOLLAND TAYLOR

Plus we strongly imply the cyborg is an ex boyfriend of yours that I had RoboCopped. Why the hell did George hook up with me? I’m terrible.

KRISTEN SCHAAL

Well I'm sure there's a fascinating origin story worth its own series in there somewhere, but nuts to you! I’m gonna make the original plan work!

She travels back to meet SAMARA and BRIGETTE.

KRISTEN SCHAAL

Here, take my time machine and help your dads. Handing time machines to dropout slackers is our solution to every crisis, apparently!

SAMARA WEAVING

Okay then, according to the prophecy our dads need “their whole band” with them when they play THE SONG. That’d be the rest of Wyld Stallions, right? Our moms, the alien dudes, and Death?

BRIGETTE LUNDY-PAINE

That’s the only logical conclusion to come to based on that wording. But fuck it, instead let’s go grab whatever fucking musicians we feel like out of history, most of whom have never even heard of rock music!

SAMARA WEAVING

Sure! When the universe is unravelling due to displaced historical figures, what better solution than displacing a whole bunch more historical figures!

They go back in time and find LOUIS ARMSTRONG in 1922 since he is both a MUSICAL GENIUS and FAIRLY EASY TO DO A PASSABLE IMITATION OF.

SAMARA WEAVING

We’re from the future! Look, a smartphone which I’ve used to capture color footage of your band!

LOUIS ARMSTRONG

Heh, neat.

They then go forward and find an ACCURATE SIMULATION of JIMI HENDRIX'S WARDROBE.

BRIGETTE LUNDY-PAINE

Hi, we’re time-travellers! Observe a young Louis Armstrong, who we’ve snatched from the past!

JIMI HENDRIX

Oh nice.

Then they go way back and track down WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART instead of BEETHOVEN who already knows about BILL AND TED AND TIME TRAVEL.

SAMARA WEAVING

Hello, we’re seemingly magical beings from beyond time and space! We’re playing weird alien tones through electrical amplification!

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

Interesting.

BRIGETTE LUNDY-PAINE

Huh, old-timey musicians were really fucking chill. Was it the drugs? Gotta be the drugs.

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

Eh, thanks to the time storm juggling everybody all over history we’re getting used to this kind of thing. I found Julius Caesar in my breakfast cereal this morning. And, I had breakfast cereal.

SAMARA WEAVING

At any rate, this band is shaping up to be a bit of a sausage fest. We should probably grab at least one legendary female musician. Who do you think, Janis Joplin? Aretha Franklin? Hildegard von Bingen? Maria Callas?

BRIGETTE LUNDY-PAINE

How about let’s get Ling Lun, the mythical Chinese flautist who is traditionally a dude and probably never lived anyway, and Grom, a cavewoman this movie made up that we couldn’t have possibly heard of in the first place.

SAMARA WEAVING

Feels like we could have tried a little harder there.

INT. MANSION, 2025

ALEX and KEANU go a bit further forward to meet FANCY RICH ALEX and FANCY RICH KEANU.

FANCY RICH ALEX WINTER

Good news, Past Usses! We have THE SONG now!

ALEX WINTER

Oh! So, back in 2022 you hadn’t performed it in 2020, but now in 2025 you have? That... doesn’t make sense.

FANCY RICH KEANU REEVES

Yeah well this is a Bill and Ted movie and NONE of the time travel makes sense so shut up and don’t question it, take the fucking song already.

Suddenly DAVE GROHL turns up!

DAVE GROHL

What are you doing in my mansion, stealing my song?!

KEANU REEVES

Dangit, they didn’t give us a Wyld Stallyns song, they tried to trick us into stealing a Dave Grohl song! We should have known we could never have written a song on the same level as the genius behind such moving lyrics as “fingernails are pretty, fingernails are good”!

FANCY RICH ALEX WINTER

Fuck, we’re rumbled, and now the cops are coming! I guess we’ll fall back on the incredibly intelligent tactic of shooting at our past selves.

FANCY RICH KEANU REEVES

Since each of these progressively more awkward action sequences make it even MORE mind-blowing that I'm also John Wick, I agree.

ALEX and KEANU flee! Out front they encounter FUTURE CYBORG ANTHONY CARRIGAN, who luckily for them is a WACKY-COMEDY MURDER CYBORG and thus easily EVADED. They get away in the BOOTH.

ANTHONY CARRIGAN

Blast, I missed them! I’ll have to follow them to their next time period and try to reacquire them there!

(pause)

Or I could just go back in time five minutes and try again here. But I suppose that would cause a paradox! And it’s really important to the people in this franchise not to create temporal paradoHA HA HA HA HAAAA, oh man, I couldn’t even say that with a straight face.

EXT. PRISON, 2030

ALEX and KEANU go forward AGAIN and find their future selves are in PRISON and are now SUPER JACKED, BRO.

MUSCLY ALEX WINTER

YOU! We went to prison because you left us to take the fall for the crime that we committed!

KEANU REEVES

And you’re still here? You guys got more than five years for breaking and entering?

MUSCLY KEANU REEVES

We must have shanked a couple guards or something, I dunno. Anything’s possible with the inexplicably awful people you guys turn into.

Then ANTHONY shows up again, trying once more to kill ALEX and KEANU.

MUSCLY ALEX WINTER

Oh shit, we can’t allow our past selves to be shot, or we’ll cease to exist! This is something we’re capable of figuring out, suddenly!

They attack ANTHONY, allowing ALEX and KEANU to escape.

ANTHONY CARRIGAN

Darn! Hmmm, following them to the time and place that they’ll be next isn’t working. Therefore logically, I should go to a time and place that they’re NOT going. Brilliant!

He goes back to ALEX and KEANU’S STUDIO, then VAPORIZES the first people he sees. Unfortunately, that turns out to be a freshly-returned SAMARA, BRIGETTE, KRISTEN, HENDRIX, ARMSTRONG, MOZART, LING, and GROM.

ANTHONY CARRIGAN

Oops, I suck so much at my mission! Although the ninety percent of the audience who already figured out the big plot twist will appreciate the irony of me thinking that.

INT. ASSISTED LIVING FACILITY, 2067

ALEX and KEANU arrive at the END OF THEIR LIVES.

ALEX WINTER

That’s right, we’re using our rapidly-dwindling time to try the same terrible plan that’s failed three times already. It’s bound to work eventually, right?

ANCIENT ALEX WINTER

Good new, Past Usses! We have THE SONG now!

KEANU REEVES

So, back in 2022 you hadn’t performed it in 2020, or in 2025, or 2030, but now in 2067 you have? That... sounds suspiciously familiar. And still makes no sense.

ANCIENT KEANU REEVES

No, it’s for real this time! See, there are actually many timelines, all happening at once. This time you’ve stumbled onto a timeline where THE SONG really happened!

ALEX WINTER

...How does multiple timelines mean we can travel forward in time from a reality where THE SONG never happened, to one where it did?

ANCIENT ALEX WINTER

Look we honestly weren’t kidding before about the time travel in these movies not holding up, just don’t look a gift horse in the mouth okay?

But then ANTHONY shows up again!

ANTHONY CARRIGAN

That’s right, pretty much every scene ends this way now! By the way guys, sorry about killing your daughters and their friends. They’re all in Hell now.

KEANU REEVES

WHAT?! Why would all those perfectly nice people go to Hell? And how the fuck do you know where in the afterlife they’ve gone to??

ANTHONY CARRIGAN

One can only assume that my laser has been deliberately designed to not only kill people, but to instantly damn them to eternal torment? Another piece of evidence for the “Holland is just the worst” theory.

ALEX WINTER

Well if our daughters are in Hell, we’ll have to go there and get them! Come on Keanu, mere minutes from the moment when we’re supposed to be saving the universe, let’s commit suicide with no solid plan on how to get back alive afterwards!

KEANU REEVES

To be fair, it turned out to be hella easy last time.

They all SELF-VAPORIZE.

INT. HELL

ALEX, KEANU and ANTHONY arrive in HELL, which looks a lot more HIGH-BUDGET now! Luckily this extra budget was allocated to CGI EFFECTS and not SOUND-STAGE SPACE, so within about two minutes they find SAMARA, BRIGETTE, KRISTEN, and the HISTORY MUSICIANS.

KEANU REEVES

Are you guys okay? I can’t imagine how horrible it must have been, stuck being tortured in Hell for nearly fifty years!

SAMARA WEAVING

Nearly fifty - what are you talking about?

ALEX WINTER

Well, you died in 2020, and we just died in 2067, so you must have been down here for forty-seven years, right?

BRIGETTE LUNDY-PAINE

Oh stop acting like time is supposed to act in a sensible fashion in these movies.

KEANU REEVES

At any rate, we can get out of here no problem, let’s just go talk to Death, who lives in Hell now apparently.

They go find WILLIAM SADLER.

SAMARA WEAVING

Dude, you need to come back to Earth with us and rejoin the band!

WILLIAM SADLER

But according to the end credits of Bogus Journey, I rejoined the band decades ago...

BRIGETTE LUNDY-PAINE

Yeah well we’ve largely thrown that continuity out. Come on, there must be some way we can convince you. Ooh, I know, what if we challenged you to a game of-

WILLIAM SADLER

NO NO, STOP RIGHT THERE

SAMARA WEAVING

But last script we stuck to board games that existed in 1991, THIS time we can really let loose with a FULL catelogue! Ooh maybe we can start with Root Underworld or T.I.M.E. Stories or Pandemic Legacy Season 1 (Blue Box) or

WILLIAM SADLER

FUCK NO, I’LL DO WHATEVER YOU WANT, SHUT UP

They all COME BACK TO LIFE in 2020!

EXT. INTERSTATE, 2020

ALL THE CHARACTERS pile out onto a FREEWAY. It is now the time for THE SONG to happen.

ALEX WINTER

But shit, we still don’t know what THE SONG even is! Ooh - wait a minute - I just realized, apropros of nothing, what the plot twist is! The Winter and Reeves who are supposed to perform THE SONG aren’t me and Keanu, who don’t know what THE SONG is. It’s Samara and Brigette! Who also don’t know what THE SONG is! And who don't even sing or play instruments!

KEANU REEVES

Yeah, you guys and the history musicians should throw together a song at the last second! And the way that’ll unite the galaxy is that we’ll have everybody at every point of every timeline play it at once! For a very vague definition of “at once”.

ALEX WINTER

Sure, that sounds like a practical plan! We’ll just use the single button in the phone booth that splits you into an infinite number of selves across all times and dimensions - imagine accidentally hitting THAT during a rushed dial, jesus - and then give an infinite number of musical instruments that we’ve acquired somehow to every single person who ever existed or will ever exist!

KEANU REEVES

And then they’ll all play the song! Even the ones who never learned how to play a musical instrument! Or the ones from time periods before these instruments were even invented!

ALEX and KEANU infinitely multiply themselves across the entire SPACETIME CONTINUUM, while SAMARA and BRIGETTE tell the PAST MUSICIANS what to do.

SAMARA WEAVING

Hey, Hendrix, stop playing like Hendrix! Mozart, cut that Mozart shit out! Everybody abandon your individual genius and just join us in a generic jam session, okay?

BRIGETTE LUNDY-PAINE

Hmmm, now that THE SONG is actually happening I can’t help but notice that it has no lyrics, no distinct melody or riffs or hooks, and is built on the same notorious Four Chords of Pop Music as a thousand other songs.

SAMARA WEAVING

It’s okay! It turns out that everybody playing at once is the only thing that’s important, THE SONG never had to be the best song ever. Or even a good song! For that matter, clearly it didn’t have to even be played by Wyld Stallyns, or by any specific person or group, and Wyld Stallyns never had to be successful or talented or noteworthy in the first place!

BRIGETTE LUNDY-PAINE

Oh, so the events of the first two movies arguably needn’t have even happened! I bet the audience feels swell about that.

Finally all of the TIME CHAOS stops, everything that got juggled out of time gets hurriedly shoved back into place, and everyone in the the GALAXY is SAVED, even JAMES MARSDEN and FAMKE JANSSEN!

ALEX WINTER

Hooray, we did it! Now we can all live happily ever-

Suddenly INFINITE ALEX and INFINITE KEANU show up and shove instruments into their hands.

INFINITE ALEX WINTER

Quick, you have to play THE SONG!

ALEX WINTER

Wait, what? We just did that.

INFINITE KEANU REEVES

What part of this song being played at “every point of time” don’t you understand? Now quick, play, or reality will cease to exist!

KEANU REEVES

O-okay...

They play THE SONG again.

ALEX WINTER

All right, phew, NOW we can live happily ever-

Suddenly INFINITE ALEX and INFINITE KEANU show up and shove instruments into their hands.

INFINITE ALEX WINTER

Quick, you have to play THE SONG!

KEANU REEVES

Dear God what have we done.

END.