Back to the Future trilogy star Christopher Lloyd would “love” to return as eccentric scientist Doc Brown for a fourth time — if the original creative team, director Robert Zemeckis and screenwriter Bob Gale, approached with the right idea.
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Asked by the Phoenix New Times if he’d participate in either a sequel or a franchise reboot, Lloyd said, “I’d be delighted. I’d love to be in a fourth film, if they could come up with the right idea that extends the story and does it as well as the first three.”
For any potential trip back to Hill Valley to take place, “it’s important if Bob Zemeckis and Bob Gale are excited about doing another episode,” Lloyd said.
“I think, really, the most important thing is if they can come up with the right idea. I think that’s the challenge is to come up with something that really is as good as the originals. I suppose it could happen. I have not heard that they’re looking for that, if they’ve made up their minds… ‘hey, here’s something we could do,’ and they believed in it then they might get going to do it.”
“I would say that it’s always possible,” Lloyd said of rebooting the 33-year-old franchise. “If they get the right script together that really could work. They don’t want to do something that’s going to come across as [disappointing]. You know sometimes sequels don’t live up the originals and it’s disappointing, and I know they don’t want that to happen. But I don’t know of any plans at the moment for them to do that.”
In 2015, while celebrating the 30th anniversary of the 1985 original, Zemeckis ruled out a remake — because he and Gale won’t allow one to happen for as long as they live, and then some.
“Oh, God no,” Zemeckis told The Telegraph of signing off on a remake. “That can’t happen until both Bob and I are dead. And then I’m sure they’ll do it, unless there’s a way our estates can stop it.”
“I mean, to me, that’s outrageous,” he added. “Especially since it’s a good movie. It’s like saying ‘Let’s remake Citizen Kane. Who are we going to get to play Kane?’ What folly, what insanity is that? Why would anyone do that?”
Zemeckis later told Digital Spy his refusal to move ahead with a fourth is “making [movie executives] insane.”
“It’s like a pre-sold title for them,” he said of a movie already guaranteed to put butts in seats. “It would open gigantically [at the box office]. That’s all that anyone cares about.”
A fourth would be difficult without Marty McFly star Michael J. Fox, whose acting output has slowed because of his Parkinson’s disease.
“The idea of making another Back to the Future movie without Michael J Fox — you know, that’s like saying, ‘I’m going to cook you a steak dinner and I’m going to hold the beef,’” Gale said at a 2008 convention celebrating the beloved time-traveling series.
Fox and Lloyd briefly reprised their most famous roles in an episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live aired October 21, 2015 — the same day Marty and Doc traveled to the future in Back to the Future Part II. The real-life date was celebrated worldwide as “Back to the Future Day.”
