Ethan Hawke diskuterade detta med Collider :
He also revealed, “We had a version of [Before Sunset] that happened two years later. But once it took us five years and we can’t get the money to make that movie we have to rethink it. So elements or lines from that script stayed. When we first finished Before Sunset there was an idea that we would do. Julie and I wanted to do a short film the next year that we thought would be really fun to do like a five minute short and then put it in the vault so to speak and then fifteen years later make another film.”
Artikeln diskuterade också den tredje filmen:
If you’re a fan (like me) of these two amazing movies and are hoping they’d do a third film, it sounds like they aren’t against it, but don’t expect to see it anytime soon. That’s because even though people constantly give Hawke ideas for the film, he says, “My thought is we will make one as soon as everybody has forgotten about it.”
De klargjorde senare den exakta orsaken till att de släppte den tredje filmen när de gjorde det, i en intervju med franska webbplatsen Allocine . Citat från Förmyndarens omskrivning av det :
Hawke reveals that he, Delpy and Linklater are negotiating a third outing for the transatlantic couple. "All of three of us have been having similar feelings that we're ready to revisit those characters," said Hawke. "There's nine years between the first two movies and, if we made the film next summer, it would be nine years again, so we really started thinking that would be a good thing to do. We're going to try to write it this year."
Så att sammanfatta, ville de släppa före solnedgången tidigare, men kämpade för att få finansiering och det försenade lanseringen. När de äntligen släppte filmen hade nio år gått. De ville inte släppa före midnatt för tidigt och slutligen bestämde sig för att släppa det nio år efter före solnedgången för att ha samma tidslinjekonsistens mellan de två första filmerna som den andra och tredje filmerna.