Broadway Goes Back to the Future: Creative Team Behind the Musical Talk Bringing the Classic to Stage (2024)

The 80s movie classic Back to the Future has joined the likes of Pretty Woman and Little Shop of Horrors as a movie turned musical, and several of the people who were involved with making the movie were involved with the show. The co-screenwriter behind the movie, Bob Gale, wrote the book for the musical, composer Alan Silvestri returned to write the music and lyrics alongside Glen Ballard, and director/co-screenwriter Robert Zemeckis served as a creative consultant.

As Gale explained to Yahoo Entertainment:

"There was no way it was going to be anyone else. Early on, we met with producers who would say, 'Just turn this over to us, and we'll do everything right.' But our feeling always was that if the show sucks, we want it to be our fault!"

This might surprise you, given the involvement of the original writers, but they weren't slavishly devoted to duplicating the movie on stage. Far from it, in fact. As Gale explained, "If that's all people wanted, they could just stay home and watch the movie." Some of the changes that were made were because of the change in mediums. For instance, since you can't have a closeup showing Lorraine Baine's facial expressions when she meets Calvin Klein, aka her future son Marty McFly, the musical has her sing about her feelings instead. And since a close-up can't show the dates the time-traveling DeLorean was currently at, they had the car talk instead. Before you get your hopes up, the DeLorean doesn't sing, though.

"I don't remember us talking about that. We do pay homage to it as one of our stars! But we never had any discussions about the car singing," said Silvestri while laughing.

Another one of the show's changes was the manner of Emmett "Doc" Brown's death in the year 1985. In the film, he's gunned down by Libyan terrorists. In the film, he dies of radiation poisoning, so Marty rushes off in the DeLoriean to get help. This change allowed them to reference something they couldn't in the movies. Gale continues saying,

"When Marty finds him alive back in the future, Doc says, 'I'm glad I kept my radiation suit from my Manhattan Project days.' That's always something that Bob and I had in mind for his backstory — he was a junior physicist who worked for the Manhattan Project. And with Oppenheimer playing in theaters now, more people know what that is!"

RELATED: Great Movies That Inspired Stage Musicals

Back to the Future Leaps From Screen to Stage

Another thing that the show was able to do was insert social commentary about the decades visited within the story. A prominent example of that is the song "Cakes," an ensemble number where Marty learns what his hometown was like in the 1950s, with "super-leaded gasoline," "filtered cigarettes," "DDT," and other fun things that you look back on and cringe.

"We had the great advantage of looking back at both the ’50s and the ’80s from a 2020's perspective. We wanted to audience to feel like they were in the '50s, but also not be naive about what the '50s were. And Marty is also arriving there from the '80s and going, 'I don't get this.' So it's still all about the storytelling, but it's also acknowledging that we look back on both decades with a different perspective now, and we're grateful for that," said musical director John Rando.

Another way the decade in the real world influenced the show was during the ending. Naturally, this is going to be a SPOILER, but the show ends with Doc arriving to pick Marty up for another adventure. Except instead of going to 2015 like in the movie, they go to the day and time of the show the audience is watching. Though they still don't need roads to get to where they're going, allowing the DeLorean to fly over the audience while doing a barrel role so that you can see the actors playing Mary and Doc.

"A lot of people ask me if it's really me up there, and I just tell them, 'You saw me waving — of course it's me!' But it's intense, man. That fact that I'm on a theme park ride eight times a week is pretty surreal," said Casey Likes, who plays Marty on stage.

Back to the Future: The Musical is currently playing at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York after a successful London run. Actors from the movie such as Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, and Lea Thompson, who played Marty, Doc, and Lorraine respectively, attended a gale even on July 26 ahead of the show's August 3 opening.

"I was very consciously aware that this was a moment very few people get to have. I said to Michael, 'What's your advice to me before I go out onstage?' And he said, 'Kick ass: If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.' That was amazing."