Lou Diamond Phillips says Young Guns 3 is in limbo but insists 'it's not dead'

Much like some of the franchise's beloved characters, Young Guns 3 is not quite dead.

"It's in limbo right now," actor Lou Diamond Phillips tells EW during a recent interview for his unveiling on The Masked Singer. "It was chugging along there for a minute, but then I think they got into a rights situation… It's not dead, but it's not happening right now."

Phillips says he's already read a "wonderful" script written by Emilio Estevez, who is also planning to direct the follow-up to 1988's Young Guns and the 1990 sequel. The Western films are a retelling of the adventures of famed outlaw William H. Bonney, a.k.a. Billy the Kid (Estevez), and a group of young gunmen named the Regulators, starring Phillips as Jose Chavez y Chavez, Kiefer Sutherland as Doc Scurlock, and a posse of other Hollywood studs at the time.

Everett Collection 'Young Guns II' stars from left, Kiefer Sutherland, Alan Ruck, Emilio Estevez, Christian Slater, and Lou Diamond Phillips.

"I would crawl through broken glass to go work with those guys again," Phillips says, explaining that the third film is akin to Top Gun: Maverick. "It's a sequel that allows for the right amount of time to have gone by, which puts it in a very interesting place in history."

One piece of history that might call for an interesting explanation is that both Chavez and Billy the Kid appeared to die in the previous film.

"Did you see the body? You never saw the body!" Phillips says with a laugh.

"Some people go, 'But the spirit horse came for you.' And I say yes, but there was nobody on the back of the spirit horse, was there?" he says of the animal that helps guide the dead to the afterlife. "The advantage of that is myself and a couple of other people died off screen. The ones who got shot to bits, they're not coming back. But there were a few of us whose death was a little ambiguous and you can kind of get around it. And so yes, Chavez would be back."

Everett Collection Lou Diamond Phillips as Chavez y Chavez in 'Young Guns II'

Those still skeptical just need to crack open a book — or at least a Wikipedia page.

"In real life," Phillips notes, "the real Jose Chavez y Chavez lived to be an older man in his 70s, so at least history is on our side."

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