Robert Zemeckis is leaving Back to the Future in the past. The filmmaker has long insisted that there would never be a Back to the Future 4 or a Back to the Future reboot or remake of his 1985 time-traveling comedy starring Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd. But in a new interview, Zemeckis revealed he is open to reviving the franchise — by bringing Back to the Future: The Musical from the stage to the big screen.
“I would like to do Back to the Future: The Musical,” Zemeckis said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast in an interview for his new movie, Here. “Just like [Mel Brooks] did with The Producers. I would love to do that. I think that would be great.” Zemeckis added that he “floated that out to the folks at Universal, but they don’t get it. So there’s nothing I can do.”
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Zemeckis joked that the studio, which released the Back to the Future trilogy between 1985 and 1990, asks him “every six months” for a Back to the Future sequel or revival. That’s “just an exaggeration,” Zemeckis clarified, who added that Universal executives often ask: “‘Isn’t there anything we can figure out to do here? Isn’t there anything we can do?’”
“You know, we have to say, ‘There are different things that might work.’ Something like that. But to remake the movie or to suggest that there’s a Back to the Future 4, it just isn’t in the cards,” Zemeckis said.
The Tony Award-nominated Back to the Future: The Musical debuted in 2020 and has had runs in London’s West End and Broadway in New York City. An ongoing North American tour is set to conclude in summer 2025 before opening in Japan.
Based on the 1985 original co-written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale, the musical adaptation features a book by Gale, music by trilogy composer Alan Silvestri, and lyrics by six-time Grammy award winning songwriter Glen Ballard. In addition to new versions of the songs included on the Back to the Future soundtrack — “The Power of Love” by Huey Lewis and the News, “Earth Angel” by Marvin Berry & The Starlighters, and Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” — the musical features numbers like “It’s Only a Matter of Time,” Marty McFly’s “Got No Future,” and a company rendition of Huey Lewis and the News’ “Back in Time.”
In 2015, during the 30th anniversary of the 1985 original, Zemeckis said that a Back to the Future remake “can’t happen until both Bob and I are dead.”
Gale previously revealed that Universal can’t develop a sequel or remake without Zemeckis and Gale due to contracts — and the duo are “very proud of the trilogy as it stands and we want to leave it as is,” as Gale explained in 2008. “I’m sure Universal would love it if we were to say to them, ‘Hey, let’s do another one,’” he said at the time, “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.”
