The long-awaited Bill & Ted 3 might actually, maybe, possibly really happen. A third film in the Bill & Ted franchise has been in the works for a long while, with writers Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson—who wrote Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey—beginning work on a script back in 2010. The sequel has never officially been set up at a studio, but given Solomon and Matheson’s passion for the characters and stars Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter’s desire to return, the writers wrote a script completely on spec.

While Bill & Ted 3 is still technically “in development,” new details have arisen from EW, which gathered Solomon, Matheson, Reeves, and Winter for a reunion piece. Titled Bill & Ted Face the Music, the sequel focuses on Rufus’s (George Carlin) promise at the end of Excellent Adventure that Bill and Ted would go on to write music that would turn the world into a utopia. The problem is, in Face the Music, they haven’t really done that yet.

“You’re told you’re gonna save the world,” Matheson says. “And now you’re 50 and you haven’t done it. Now they’re married, and it affects their marriages, and it affects their relationships with their kids, and it affects their everything.” “Everybody’s a little older now,” notes Reeves. “A little afraid.” “There’s certain comparisons,” says Winter. “A rock band that never goes to the place it thought it was going to get to. Having that moment in their life of going: ‘Do we try to get there, or give up the dream?’”

Solomon, who most recently wrote Steven Soderbergh‘s excellent branched narrative Mosaic for HBO, goes so far to say that Face the Music is “kind of like A Christmas Carol with Bill and Ted. Looking at their lives, and really kind of rediscovering what they’re about.” That sounds like a brilliant idea for a Bill & Ted follow-up right there, and especially right now it feels like the world could really use a Bill & Ted movie. Luckily, it looks like maybe, finally, hopefully this thing will actually happen soon. Solomon says they’re hoping to close a deal for financing within the next month or so, and Dean Parisot (Galaxy Quest) is still attached to direct.

As previously revealed, William Sadler is returning as Death, and Steven Soderbergh is onboard as one of the producers alongside original producer Scott Kroopf. The sequel has a lot going for it, and while there’s no such thing as a sure thing in this unpredictable Hollywood climate, the perseverance of Solomon, Matheson, Reeves, and Winter bodes well. After years of crossing fingers, there’s no reason to give up hope on Bill & Ted 3 yet.