It's hard to believe that a beloved film that was once rejected by Disney has made its way to the high seas.
Royal Caribbean is bringing the musical version of the 1985 Back to the Future film to its cruise ship. Today, it's a cultural phenomenon, but it almost never happened.
Speaking onboard Star of the Seas, co-writer Bob Gale shared the story of the movie was pitched to movie executives.
The pitch was turned down over 40 times, with studios claiming that the story was too lighthearted for such a serious sci-fi premise.
Even after the seemingly constant rejection, Oscar-winning director Robert Zemeckis and co-writer Bob Gale decided to take the pitch to Disney, where they received perhaps the harshest criticism of all.
"Think they would make a movie about incest? You've got the kid and his mom in a car. Get out of here!" Gale recalled during a panel aboard Star of the Seas, the first-ever cruise ship to bring Back to the Future: The Musical to life at sea.
It wasn't until Zemeckis worked on the 1984 hit movie Romancing the Stone that revisiting Back to the Future became possible.
"Everybody in town did want to be in business with [Zemeckis]," Gale said, "And they said, 'Bob, what movie do you want to make?'... And all this time, there was one guy who always liked the script. His name was Steven Spielberg."
Spielberg was already a powerhouse in Hollywood and had previously worked with Gale three times on the films I Want to Hold Your Hand (1978), 1941 (1979), and Used Cars (1980).
Initially, Gale was worried that if Back to the Future tanked, he'd never be able to work with Spielberg again. But with the success of Zemeckis's Romancing the Stone, everything changed.
"Steven had just set up Amblin Entertainment on the Universal lot, and we became the first movie to be produced out of Amblin Entertainment. We got set up in 1984. And the rest, as they say, is history," Gale explained.
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That history wasn’t made without a few bumps along the road
Even after the film was greenlit, Gale and Zemeckis faced a series of challenges, starting with casting for the lead role of Marty McFly.
"The president of the studio insisted that we cast Eric Stoltz to play Marty McFly. We could not get Michael J. Fox out of his TV series Family Ties. And so you know, when the president of the corporation tells you [that] you got to do something, you do it."
Still, they realized Stoltz wasn’t the right fit for the role, and they eventually let him go to cast Fox.
Origins of Back to the Future: The Musical
According to Gale, Zemeckis and his wife saw The Producers on Broadway, which inspired his wife to suggest creating a stage adaptation of Back to the Future.
They had already finished Back to the Future II and Back to the Future III and were adamant about not creating a prequel or spinoffs. As such, Zemeckis and Gale leaned into the idea of a musical adaptation.
"We thought if we did a theatrical musical that would be a way of giving the public more Back to the Future, but in a way that didn't disturb...the canon of the trilogy," he said.
First, they called Alan Silvestri, who composed the music for the movies. Then, they reached out to Glen Ballard, a Grammy-winning songwriter who had previously worked with Silvestri on songs for The Polar Express.
After a few weeks, Silvestri and Ballard came back with some songs, and the team knew they had something great in the works.
"Now, it took us...four years from when we thought of the idea of doing Back to the Future to when we finally got it made, and ten years after that, all three movies were made," stated Gale.
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Comparatively, ten years after thinking about the musical adaptation, they still didn't have a director. Colin Ingram was the only producer they had met who thought it was a smart idea.
However, once they got John Rando onboard, everything fell into place, including figuring out how to bring the DeLorean to the stage.
"So here we are, now on a cruise ship. If the Me of today could travel back in time to August, September 1980, when Bob Zemeckis and I were struggling to write this script and said, 'Do you know guys know where this story is going to go? Do you know where you're going to be in the year 2025? You're going to be on a cruise ship in the middle of the Caribbean Sea.' Bob and I would have called security and said, 'We've got a lunatic in our office. Get him the heck out of here,'" he joked.
