When Back to the Future Part III hit cinemas in 1990, co-creators Robert Zemeckis (director) and Bob Gale (producer and screenwriter) were adamant that there would be no Back to the Future 4.
The two Bobs felt that they had completed the time-travelling adventures of Doc Brown and Marty McFly and have resisted big pay days over the decades to green-light further sequels.
In fact, Gale has joked over the years that it won’t be long before Back to the Future is the only movie trilogy left as other franchises bring back aging stars for legacy cash-ins.
Instead, Back to the Future has continued through other mediums from comic books to video games and most recently the stage musical version of the original movie.
Yet despite all this, it turns out that Zemeckis is very keen to direct a fourth Back to the Future movie, but it’s not quite what you might imagine.
Speaking on The Happy Sad Confused podcast to promote his new movie Here, Zemeckis was asked if there was a project he would love to tackle next.
The Oscar-winning director replied: “I would like to do the Back to the Future, the musical [as a movie]. Just like [Mel] Brooks did The Producers. I would love to do that.”
This isn’t too surprising given that it was seeing the stage musical version of Brooks’ 1967 comedy movie that sparked the idea of the two Bobs turning Back to the Future into a musical.
And given that The Producers musical was so good, it wasn’t long before Brooks had Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick’s Broadway performances immortalised into a 2005 movie.
After first seeing Back to the Future the Musical in the UK, Zemeckis turned to Gale and told him: “It’s as a good as the movie”. Yet there’s just one spanner in the works in getting Back to the Future the Musical: The Movie made.
Zemeckis added: “I think that would be great… I floated that out to the folks at Universal. They don’t get it. So, nothing I can do.”
Presumably, Universal Studios would rather just make a legacy sequel rather than a movie version of Back to the Future the Musical. There’s also the fact that The Producers musical film flopped at the box office.
Additionally, the director would need to get Gale on board and from what he previously told Express.co.uk when we suggested the idea of making a movie out of the musical, he didn’t sound too keen.
The Back to the Future co-creator told us in 2022: “I kinda doubt it. I think if people want to see a movie of Back to the Future, there’s already a really good movie called Back to the Future. We think that the stage show belongs on stage and the movie belongs in the cinema and that’s why the theatrical production is not a slavish adaptation of the movie.” But who knows, maybe Gale and Universal will change their minds in the future? We certainly hope so.