While Keanu Reeves may be taking his career to the next level with his directorial debut, the martial arts film "Man of Tai Chi," fans can't help but look back at the movie that kicked his career into high gear way back in 1989: "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure."

The time-traveling buddy comedy spawned a sequel in 1991 ("Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey") and has earned a devoted cult following — one that's constantly asking what's holding up the long-delayed "Bill & Ted 3."

"It's a long story," Reeves told MTV News' Josh Horowitz while at the Toronto International Film Festival. "There's lots of subterfuge and conspiracy theories. There's a whole thing... I might have to do one of those independent press, conspiracy, other-name kind of [statements] explaining why it hasn't happened yet, because it's pretty dark out there."

Getting a film made can be a tough thing, especially if the previous films are from a few decades past, but Reeves continued to hint at darker forces at play.

"There is [a script]," revealed Reeves. "There's all sorts of stuff and it just can't — it's just — there's darkness out there that's keeping it from happening... It's that part of the story where it's looking grim. It's the dark period of the idea!"

Horowitz tried to look on the bright side, stating that it is always darkest before the dawn — but Reeves wasn't budging. His co-star Alex Winter, who played Bill, had a more positive outlook back at South by Southwest, but maybe that was before the darkness came.

"There's no drama," Alex Winter told MTV News in March. "There's no legal skirmish. There's no nothing. There's me, Keanu, [screenwriters] Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, the original core. We built a story. They wrote a script. We're tinkering with the script to get it perfect. Then we will go get the money. Then we will shoot it. And that's really all there is to it."

While Reeves kept any specific "Bill & Ted 3" details shrouded in mystery, he did offer up a story from the good old days. "One day we're going in — Alex and I both, once we heard that we got the roles, we thought we were playing the other guy's role. So I thought I was going to be playing Bill and he thought he was going to be playing Ted. It was weird. We both went to wardrobe fittings and they told us we had the other roles, and then we said, [disheartened] 'OK.' "

Reeves can be seen next in the fantastical action film "47 Ronin," which opens on December 25.