BILL & TED FACE THE MUSIC Almost Included a Magical Team-Up With Santa Claus

Bill & Ted Face the Music was an incredibly fun entry in the franchise that brought the story back to its roots, paying homage to fans of the original film while keeping the audience engaged and enjoying the journey. But as goofy as the movie got, it almost got a lot sillier, with the appearance of Santa Claus!

As you know, if you’ve seen the film, the key to Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) playing the final song that will save the universe with the help of their daughters, Thea (Samara Weaving) and Billie (Brigette Lundy-Paine), is getting instruments out to the everyone in the world to play together at the same time. But of course that was a tricky storyline to execute, so when ironing out the details, co-writer of the film, Ed Solomon said they almost turned to Christmas magic to pull it off. Here’s what he said in the Collider Podcast (via CB):

“We had a version that I really loved that did not last very long, it lasted for one draft. [They] had to get instruments to everyone in the world throughout all space and time in one evening, and they were like, ‘How are we gonna possibly do that? We have no way to do that!’ and they say, ‘Well we can’t, but there’s one man who can,’ and then we cut to, ‘Ho ho ho!’ and a sleigh, and it was Bill and Ted and the Princesses on Santa’s sleigh using Santa magic because Santa can go around the world in one night. They were actually going down chimneys and they were having a great time, and it was this crazy montage that we had written. That did not last."

He added:

"I thought because the antecedents to this movie were A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life, so maybe it’s a Christmas movie and we have Santa at the end? I think Alex Winter liked it briefly, but I don’t think anyone else thought it was a good idea, then we ended up scrapping that.”

I think the movie was just silly enough, and making it a full-blown Christmas movie would have made it just terrible. They already utilize time-travel in the film, so the addition of Santa Claus would have just been too much. I’m glad they found another way, and I’m happy with how the movie turned out.

What do you think?