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Back to the Future Co-Writer Says Film Was Adapted Into a Musical Because No One Can Replace Michael J. Fox

Back to the Future is one of those iconic movie franchises that are enjoyed throughout the ages. No matter what age you are, you have most likely grown up watching this iconic film. In a world where beloved nostalgic movies are being rebooted and remade, is it Back to the Future’s turn? Yes. No. Well, not the way you think.

Get ready for Back to the Future: The Musical. Plenty of beloved movies have been made into musicals for the big stage – Legally Blonde, a short-run of Spider-Man, and many more. It’s taken twelve years to bring Back to the Future on stage and it’s sounding like an interesting take on the 1985 classic.

Bob Gale scripted the stage show, as well as co-wrote the movies. He speaks on the differences between theater and film:

“It’s the same story of the movie. But there are things that you can do and can’t do on stage that differ from cinema.”

Get ready for Marty McFly jamming out to music and a deeper look into the characters. One difference? There’s no Einstein the dog. Don’t worry, though; the DeLorean’s high-speed time-travel will be featured:

“Eighty-eight miles an hour, clock tower, lightning – oh, yeah. One point 21 gigawatts. All that is intact. Absolutely,” Gale says, “How do we do it? I’m not gonna tell you that! Good magicians never reveal their tricks.”

Back to the Future apparently has been in demand for a while [to be brought back]. A 2018 survey stated that viewers would like to see a new Back to the Future over a new Harry Potter, Star Wars, Toy Story, or any other franchise film.

Gale comments:

“Lots of people were clamoring, ‘Why don’t you guys do Back to the Future part 4? Why don’t you do a reboot of Back to the Future’?”

In case you didn’t know, Gale and Robert Zemeckis (the director and co-writer to all three movies) have a contract with Universal. That contract states that there cannot be any new Back to the Future films made without their say-so. The power, right? Studio bosses have supposedly tried to persuade them, according to Gale:

“All the time. All the time. ‘What can we do to convince you guys to do this?’ We said, ‘Nothing’. ‘You’ll make a lot of money.’ ‘We already made a lot of money.’ You know, you don’t sell your kids into prostitution. It was the wrong thing to do. We put ‘The End’ at the end of part three. Plus Michael J Fox isn’t in the shape to do a movie, and nobody wants to see Marty McFly having Parkinson’s disease, and nobody wants to see another actor playing Marty McFly if it’s supposed to be a continuation. We’ve already seen the Star Wars movies and Luke Skywalker is an old man. That can be a little bit painful, right?”

Gale continued his reasoning:

“We learn from the fact that so many studios have gone back to the well on some of their franchise properties too many times, and the audiences are disappointed and say, ‘Oh my God, they ruined my childhood.’ We don’t want to ruin anybody’s childhood, and doing a musical was the perfect way to give the public more Back to the Future without messing up what has gone before.”

British actor will play Marty and Roger Bart will play Doc Brown for the stage show.

For the full interview, check out BBC One. What do you think about Gale’s comments and are you interested in a Back to the Future musical?