Great Scott! It’s Back to the Future: The Musical
Marty McFly and Doc Brown return for an all new Back to the Future musical in Sydney.
It’s time to reset your watches to 1985!
Four decades after Back to the Future became the biggest box office film of the year, the musical adaptation is coming to Sydney in an all-singing, all-dancing version of time-travelling duo Marty McFly and Dr Emmett Brown.
More than 3.1 million people have seen the US and UK productions, and The Weekend Australian was recently given a backstage tour in London. With projections, special effects, a live orchestra and lighting that fills the theatre, and a 90 per cent scale time-travelling DeLorean car, it is like nothing staged before.
But in an exclusive interview to mark the 40th anniversary of the iconic film starring Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd, Academy Award-winning director Robert Zemeckis said Back to the Future would not be made today.
“It would never get made today,” he told The Weekend Australian. “The screenplay of Back to the Future would terrify anyone who read it in today’s world. They would say, ‘We don’t know what to do with this. We don’t know how to market anything that’s original like this. So we can’t make it’.”
The movie became fixed in popular culture and spawned two sequels that saw skateboarding, guitar-playing, lovesick teenager McFly and Brown, who lost his family fortune on inventions that did not work, travelling to the future of 2015 and the past of 1885.
Zemeckis and co-writer/producer Bob Gale have repeatedly turned down studio pleas for a further sequel or remake, arguing the trilogy cannot be made better. But Zemeckis said he would direct a musical version of the film with a new cast.
“I would absolutely love to film it because I’ve never done a musical,” said Zemeckis, who also directed Forrest Gump (1994), Cast Away (2000) and most recently Here (2024). “It is different enough again to stand on its own as a musical companion to the trilogy.”
The musical will be staged at the Sydney Lyric Theatre from September 26. Construction of the set, props and automated DeLorean takes at least five months by the 68-person production team. The cast of 25 will be confirmed soon, following 1000 video auditions and 450 in-person auditions in Sydney and Melbourne.
Producer Colin Ingram told The Weekend Australian the attention to detail in scenery and props will not disappoint devoted fans, and added that those who have not seen the original film will also enjoy the musical.
“Audiences are going to get a show full of heart, nostalgia and spectacle,” he said. “They will see something on stage that hasn’t been done before – a unique blend of illusions, lighting, sound effects, automation and video.”
Currently playing on London’s West End, where it won an Olivier Award, and on tour across North America, Back to the Future: The Musical will also open in Japan and Germany, and on Royal Caribbean’s Star of the Seas cruise liner.
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