Now it is a trend of revivals, reboots, and more and more sequels of older hit properties being made in the last few years. Luckily, Back to the Future isn’t one of them, and it’s co-writer Bob Gale said it never will be rebooted or get a sequel.
Back to the Future is one of the most popular 80s movie franchises of all-time, and it’s hard not to think that someone in Universal has considered the idea of rebooting the franchise back to life in some form or another. But, in a recent interview with The Collider Podcast, Gale explains why a fourth movie in the franchise will never happen:
“We told a complete story with the trilogy. If we went back and made another one, we’d have Michael J. Fox, who will be sixty next year, and he has Parkinson’s Disease.”
Gale went on to said that seeing an older Marty McFly with Parkinson’s Disease probably isn’t something the audience and fans would be love to watch. He also added that Back to the Future without Michael J. Fox is not possible at all. There’s also the case that a new movie probably wouldn’t hold up against the original string of movies, and used Star Wars: The Phantom Menace as an example:
“And we’ve seen this repeatedly with sequels that go back to the well after many, many years, and they go ‘Ah, well, The Phantom Menace, maybe my life would have been better if I hadn’t seen it.’ There are a lot of extra sequels like that.”
“We didn’t want to be those guys who did a movie that was basically a money grab. Universal says to us, ‘You’d guys would make a whole lot of money,’ but we’re like, ‘Well, we’ve already made a whole lot of money with these movies, and we like them just the way they are. And as proud parents, we’re not going to sell our kids into prostitution.’”
Gale also said, that there would never be another Back to the Future movie without the consent of the main creative talent:
“We have an understanding with [Steven] Spielberg and Amblin that there would never be another Back to the Future movie without our blessing or being involved. So it’s not going to happen.”