Back to the Future Addresses Reports of Animated Series Reboot

By Patrick Cavanaugh

The Back to the Future franchise is an iconic brand that has failed to earn a major revival like other properties from the '80s, but don't get your hopes up about the concept making a return anytime soon, especially with the franchise's Twitter account debunking that an animated reboot was on the way. It's hard to imagine Back to the Future ever making a comeback without franchise staples Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd, though an animated series would understandably make it much easier for them to take part in as opposed to a full-blown live-action adventure.

When responding to unsubstantiated reports claiming a reboot was on the way, the Back to the Future account replied with a GIF of Lloyd saying, "It ain't happening." This debunking of an initial report saw some fans wondering if it was even a possibility, to which the franchise account replied with a GIF of Michael J. Fox saying, "The answer is no." 

Even though the series hasn't earned a high-profile revival in recent years, the franchise has still found a way to keep the concept fresh for younger audiences. Starting in 2015, IDW Publishing released dozens of comic books exploring the further adventures of Marty McFly and Doc Brown, while Back to the Future: The Musical offered an endearing and entertaining reimagining of the source material.

While Fox is unlikely to return to the franchise, he previously shared how he could see the concept be brought back to life.

"I actually had this thought that if they did the movie again, they should do it with a girl as Marty," Fox recalled to Entertainment Tonight back in October. "There's something about [the franchise] that connects with people on every level. I just feel like it will come around again."

Despite Fox's endorsement of this approach, given the harassment suffered by 2016's attempts to revive Ghostbusters from trolls, a female-focused spin on Back to the Future would surely suffer a similar fate.

Original writer Bob Gale previously reflected on why he believed we'll never get a reboot of the property.

"The thing that people don't always understand about Back to the Future and what really makes it work, because people say, 'Oh, let's do a time travel series.' Well, okay, time travel series are really hard to pull off," Gale explained to ComicBook.com back in 2020. "Back to the Future works because it's the story of this family, and time travel is an element of it, but you are totally with those characters. It's a terrific dramatization of a moment that every human being has in their life, which is the moment when we're kids and we suddenly realize, 'Oh, my God, my parents were once kids, too.' By the time you're five or six years old, you look at your parents and they're these God-like figures, and they don't age, as far as you can tell. They must have always been there, and then suddenly, by the time you're seven, eight, nine, you suddenly start putting it together, that, 'My parents were once kids.'"

He continued, "That is the power of Back to the Future. It's the human stuff. It's not the logistics of traveling through time because, frankly, you look at a time travel series, both things that they've done on television and things that they've done in comic books, and they fall into this trap of using time travel as a plot mechanism."

Stay tuned for details on the future of Back to the Future.

Would you like to see the franchise get a revival? Let us know in the comments!

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