This much they knew: the DeLorean would have to fly.

As screenwriters Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis contemplated bringing their beloved 1985 film, Back to the Future, to the stage, they were aware that not everything would transfer. Audiences in 2024 wouldn’t have the same appetite for the terrorists pursuing Doc, for example, and the skateboard chase felt too dangerous onstage. But the DeLorean? A non-negotiable.

Don Stephenson and Caden Brauch in Back to the Future: The Musical National Tour. Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

“One of the things that we started off thinking about is there are certain touchstones of the movie that people would not even bother with if we didn’t have the DeLorean,” Gale says.  “We knew we had to make the car fly. That just had to happen.”

Back to the Future, now lauded as a sci-fi classic, catapulted Michael J. Fox to next-level stardom as the teenager Marty McFly, who is jolted back to the 1950s with the wild-haired scientist Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd), where he must make sure his parents fall in love, thereby ensuring his birth.

The musical did not move quite as fast as Doc’s time-traveling sports car. In 2005, Zemeckis and his wife, Leslie, were in New York catching some theater when they saw The Producers, the record-breaking 2001 musical based on a more than 20-year-old film. “They came out very impressed, very giddy, and Leslie turns to Robert and says, you know what would make a good musical?”

“We really started working on it in earnest in February 2006,” Gale continues. “The first person we called was [composer] Alan Silvestri because if you want the musical to sound like Back to the Future, you hire the guy who made Back to the Future sound like Back to the Future.”

Gale took on the task of writing the book for the musical, and to collaborate with Silvestri, they brought in Glen Ballard, the co-writer of Alanis Morisette’s Jagged Little Pill, and Silvestri’s collaborator on the Zemeckis film Polar Express. The four of them began meeting at Zemeckis’s office in Carpinteria, California. The quartet worked beautifully. So what took nearly 20 years to get the musical on stage?

Caden Brauch in Back to the Future: The Musical National Tour. Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

Surprisingly, finding a theatrical producer. Even with a solid gold property like Back to the Future, it wasn’t an easy sell.

“The thing about doing a Broadway musical is that it’s kind of a tight, closed fraternity, and we would keep getting, ‘Well, why do you think you guys could do this? You’ve never done a musical before.’ And we’d say ‘Well, yeah, we haven’t done a musical before, but we have done Back to the Future before.”

Another producer was daunted by the technical challenges, saying he didn’t want to work that hard. Others wanted to take control of the production, but Zemeckis and Gale, who owned the theatrical rights, weren’t about to let go of the title.

“Finally in about 2012, Glen Ballard got hired to work on a musical based on the movie Ghost with [the Eurythmics’] Dave Stewart, and the producer of that show, Colin Ingram, turns out he was a huge Back to the Future fan. Colin just went crazy for the idea. He had exactly the right energy, the right attitude.”

He also said, “Why wouldn’t I want you guys to be the creative force on this, because you guys know Back better than anyone,” Gale recalls.

Don Stephenson, Caden Brauch, and Company in Back to the Future: The Musical National Tour. Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

Gale grew up in St. Louis, the son of musical theater fans, and that Midwestern decency shines through after decades in Hollywood. His mother and grandfather were professional violinists, and Gale remembers going to shows at the Muny, where his grandfather would be playing in the orchestra of the beloved outdoor theater. Gale grew up on the mid-century classics: Rodgers and Hammerstein, My Fair Lady, Guys and Dolls.

“Those were the musicals that gave me the understanding of the form, the Golden Age stuff,” he says. “That was what we wanted to do with Back to the Future, take the way that they used to do musicals and jazz it up with technology, but the core of it is going to be the human core that we grew up with.”

Gale took on writing the book for the musical, and is credited as co-creator and producer with Zemeckis. The two became friends as film students at the University of Southern California. Their script for Back to the Future the movie was not seen as a sure thing; it was rejected 44 times. Only after Zemeckis had a hit with Romancing the Stone did the script get picked up.

In addition to Silvestri and Ballard’s original songs written for the theater, the musical includes Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” and, by Huey Lewis and the News, the signature songs “The Power of Love” and “Back in Time.” For Gale, writing a musical moved him from fan to creator.

“There was always a lot of give and take between myself, between Alan, Glen, and between (director) John Rando,” Gale says. “He said, ‘If there’s a really important piece of exposition, you have to have it in dialogue. You can’t put it in the song. The audience is not going to remember the lyrics of a song. John Rando, he’s a walking encyclopedia of musical theater and I got the best education just by working with him.”

Back to the Future: The Musical opened in London in 2021 and began its Broadway run at the Winter Garden in August of 2023.  It is slated to close on Broadway January 5. In addition to the U.S. tour, the show is slated for Japan, Germany and Australia, as well as Royal Caribbean cruise lines.

“If you’re a parent, you can bring your kids,” Gale says with a chuckle. “If you’re a kid, you can bring your parents.”

DETAILS
Back to the Future: The Musical
Jan 22 – Feb 9, 2025 • Buell Theatre
Tickets