Keanu Reeves joins 'Keanu' as late add-on, voices a cat

LOS ANGELES, April 28 (UPI) -- Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele confirm actor Keanu Reeves joined the duo's upcoming flick, Keanu, as a last-minute addition to voice a runaway cat.

Speaking at the Los Angeles premiere of the comedy, Peele revealed dialogue was inserted into the script ahead of the movie's debut at the South by Southwest festival in March to accommodate Reeves.

"You definitely wanted to do very Matrix-y, iconic lines, like 'I am an FBI agent,'" he said Wednesday, according to USA Today. "We don't have Keanu say that, but things that you hear once, but are stuck with you."

"You never forget 'em," Key added.

Director Peter Atencio detailed what occurred to finally attract Reeves to the project, which the Los Angeles Times reported his management first rejected. Speaking to the outlet, he said at first, the studio attempted to get a live-action cameo.

"We didn't want to seem like we were making a John Wick parody," he said. "But the studio kept asking, 'Can we get Keanu? Can we get Keanu?'" but they "politely declined."

After the first film trailer released earlier this year, however, Reeves contacted the studio directly, with the help of his sister's reported urging, to offer his services in any way possible.

"We had a scene in the movie where Peele's character is on a drug trip, and a cat kind of leads him through his hallucinations. We wanted to expand on that anyway, so we thought he could do the voiceover for the cat in that scene," Atenico said.

Because Reeves was in Italy filming John Wick 2 at the time, and Keanu was nearly complete, the director said he recorded Reeves' lines via Skype.

"They hooked it up so that I could talk and he could hear it in his headphones," he explained. "The studio [Warner Bros.] was wanting him to drop a bunch of references to his old movies. But we didn't want to make it overt or too pointed."

Keanu, Key and Peele's first feature-length film, follows two friends as they search for a stolen kitten named after Reeves. It opens in theaters April 29.