Fans of the Bill and Ted franchise were elated to learn with the release of Bill and Ted Face the Music this summer that the long-awaited sequel did not suck. In fact, Bill & Ted 3 turned out to be one of the best films of the year, offering a message of hope and compassion for one's fellow human that the world really needed this year.

But the long road to getting Bill and Ted 3 made was full of stops and starts, and in the end the sequel had to be made on a very tight budget despite the fact that Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter reprised their starring roles as the titular dudes. There are other versions of this movie that could have happened had the budget been bigger, and co-writer Ed Solomon is offering fans a glimpse at some deleted scenes that were never filmed, but that he and co-writer Chris Matheson are proud of nonetheless.

Solomon shared the below scene over the weekend, which involves Bill and Ted traveling back in time to confront their 10-year-old selves to ask them to fix the pickle they’re in (i.e. writing the greatest song ever written on a ticking clock). And I got a chance to speak with Solomon to add some context to this scene and explain why it was cut.

Solomon revealed to Collider that this is one of a few scenes that he and Matheson had to pull out of the movie for a variety of reasons, including another scene in which Bill and Ted went back to when they first met Rufus outside the Circle K.

This particular scene was cut mainly for budgetary reasons, as Solomon and Matheson were forced to decide between two different scenes in which Bill and Ted confront other versions of themselves.

Solomon revealed that they had a deeper storyline for the princesses (played by Jayma Mays and Erinn Hayes) planned for the film, which would have followed the characters to different realities where they saw what life might have been like without Bill and Ted. But because the budget of Bill & Ted 3 was so tight, they had to make editorial decisions before they even started filming:

“We were like we just can’t fit everything we want to do into the movie. In a normal film situation, if you love a scene and you’re not 100% certain it’s gonna stay in the movie but you wanna see how it lands once the film is edited, you know you shoot it and you make those decisions in post-production, but we just could not afford to do that.”

So it came down to deciding to shoot either the scene in which Bill and Ted confront their 10-year-old selves or the scene in which Bill and Ted – after having traveled forward in time to meet their despondent 52-year-old selves who are now single – go back to their counseling session and talk to the princesses. And because the princesses storyline had already been pared down and the characters were the emotional heart of the movie, they didn’t want to lose yet another scene with them. And so, when forced to choose between a comedy scene and an emotional one, they went with the latter:

“On a purely comedic level that [10-year-old Bill and Ted] scene might have been a bit stronger, but on a more important level, which is the emotional throughline of the movie, it was more important for them to go back to their wives. We were forced to make the choice because we just couldn’t afford to shoot both.”

Solomon said he plans to share another scene that wasn’t shot soon, so stay tuned to his Twitter account. In the meantime, if you haven’t read my reported rundown of the long road to making Bill and Ted Face the Music a reality, you can check that out here.