Bill & Ted Face the Music VOD Release Moves Up to August

The planners behind Bill & Ted Face the Music have decided that the film’s recently announced release date for VOD and limited theatrical engagements was too bogus to keep. Thus, in yet another frantic shift (one that’s become quite commonplace in the COVID era), the belated third entry in the film franchise will see its recently-set September date shift to the end of August—that’s this month!

Bill & Ted Face the Music is now set to hit VOD and limited international theatrical showings on Friday, August 28. The new premiere is just one week earlier than its previous September 1 date, which was announced a few weeks ago. While no reason was cited for the release date shift—announced by co-star Alex Winter—it might be attributed to other recent major schedule shifts, notably the move of Disney’s Mulan away from theatrical plans to a streaming release on Disney+ on Friday, September 4, and director Christopher Nolan’s epic, Tenet, which is now set to hit theaters in select U.S. cites on Wednesday, September 2. Indeed, the move separates Bill & Ted from the competitive Labor Day weekend arrival of heavy hitters releases that could have stolen the oxygen from its VOD drop.

Now set for August 28, Bill & Ted Face the Music will go head-to-head with a smattering of COVID-limited streaming and/or VOD releases, the most notable of which is Marvel movie The New Mutants, which is still scheduled to hit theaters on that same date, despite widespread expectations that it would either shift to streaming on Disney+ or go the same premium VOD route as Bill & Ted. Yet, this latest set destination for the air-guitaring time-travelling threequel is the presumed culmination of a process that initially (back in early 2019,) had it set for a theatrical release on August 21, which was held until as recently as this past June, when—in the face of some short-lived optimisim—it was actually shifted up to August 14; a move that quickly proved folly in the face of the health crisis, resulting in the aforementioned and now-nixed September 1 date.

Nevertheless, Bill & Ted Face the Music, will ultimately do what its title implies, and sooner than we thought (once again). The film, will pick things up—nearly thirty years after the fact—from the famous film franchise of 1989’s Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and 1991’s Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, showcasing role reprisals from Alex Winter as Bill S. Preston, Esq. and superstar Keanu Reeves as Ted “Theodore” Logan, both of whom continue their thus-far-fruitless endeavor to compose their long-prophesized world-peace-yielding hit by taking another trip through time, this time joined by Bill’s daughter, Thea Preston (Samara Weaving), and Ted’s daughter, Billie Logan (Brigette Lundy-Paine), along with the return of Bogus Journey’s Death (William Sadler), and franchise newcomers played by Kid Cudi, Jillian Bell and Kristen Schaal.

While this particular schedule shift—minor as it may be—comes at a surprise, we can (probably) expect it to be the last one, and definitely state that Bill & Ted Face the Music is hitting premium VOD and select international theaters on August 28.