Back to the Future 4: Series Writer, Producer Has Perfect Response to Sequel

In a time where just about everything is getting a reboot or a sequel — even one decades after the previous film — there is one movie in particular that fans consistently ask about. That would be Back to the Future, with fans of the iconic time-travel franchise regularly asking when Back to the Future 4 will happen. It’s a question that has come up many times over the years despite filmmaker Robert Zemeckis regularly insisting that the film would simply never happen. Now, series writer and producer Bob Gale is also chiming in, definitively shooting down the idea of a fourth film.

“People always say when are you guys going to do a Back to the Future 4?” Gale said (via Collider). “And we say f-ck you. And you can quote me on this.”

Gale also went on to explain that it was fan love for Back to the Future that prompted the existing sequels and even the musical but said that he doesn’t see the need to go back and do even more.

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“We made three terrific movies and people kept asking for more Back to the Future so we made Back to the Future: The Musical, which Chris [Lloyd] and Lea [Michelle] have attended on several occasions… We’re taking it around the world,” Gale said.

The idea of a fourth Back to the Future film is something that seems to come up pretty regularly and while Zemeckis has been adamant as far back as 2018 that a fourth film simply isn’t happening, that hasn’t stopped people from wanting it. Zemeckis has in the past suggested that he wouldn’t mind seeing the Back to the Future: The Musical head to the big screen, though, something he mentioned last year during an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused Podcast.

“I would like to do Back to the Future: The Musical,” he said. “Just like [Mel Brooks] did with The Producers. I would love to do that. I think that would be great.”

He added that he’s “floated that one out to the folks at Universal, but they don’t get it. So, there’s nothing I can do.”

Gale has also been pretty adamant about their not ever being a remake or a sequel for Back to the Future, commenting back in 2015 that such things would have to wait until both he and Zemeckis have died due to contracts.

“I’m sure Universal would love it if we were to say them, ‘Hey, let’s do another one,” Gale said. “But we don’t think we could ever make a fourth one that would live up to how great the first three are, so we’re going to leave well enough alone.”

As for Back to the Future: The Musical, the production opened at Manchester Opera House in February 2020 and opened on Broadway in June 2023. The production wrapped up its run on Broadway on this January. A North American tour of the musical is currently underway. A production is planned to open in Tokyo in April of this year while a production on Royal Caribbean’s Star of the Seas is expected to launch this year, as well as an Australian production set to open in September at the Sydney Lyric Theater in Sydney, Australia.