During an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast to promote his new film, Here, Zemeckis was asked if there was anything that he’d like to tackle before he retires, such as a genre that he hadn’t worked in before, or an actor that he hadn’t worked with yet. The director responded by saying that he would like to produce Back to the Future: The Musical as a feature film, not unlike the filmed version of the Broadway production adapting Mel Brooks’ The Producers.
The stage musical version of Back to the Future opened in London’s West End in 2021 to rave reviews, receiving the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical in 2022. The show moved to Broadway in August 2023, with a national touring production beginning in June of 2024. However, it doesn’t look like the movie adaptation will happen, as Zemeckis has already pitched the idea at Universal and “they don’t get it.”
This is one more way for him to say, “Fuck off. We’re not doing a sequel or reboot.” Maybe with a little dash of, “but if you still wanted to throw some money at me…”
Kinda makes sense, but it is still weird hearing him say it. Especially after the musical flop that was Joker 2
Joker 2 was also pretty much explicitly a “fuck you, we don’t need a sequel” of a movie