Back to the Future is considered by many to be one of the defining films of the 1980s. The blockbuster film kick-started the career of Family Ties star Michael J. Fox and spawned two successful sequels. However, while stars Lea Thompson, Christopher Lloyd, Thomas F. Wilson, and Fox have all talked fondly about the experience of making the film, they’ve also been blunt about its troubles.
Co-creator Bob Gale and director Robert Zemeckis have often spoken about the 40 times that Back to the Future was infamously rejected before Universal Studios greenlit it. Ironically, it was Steven Spielberg who had been the only one who wanted to make it, and in the end, it was his company, Amblin Entertainment, that produced it.
Too Raunchy for Hollywood, Too Risky for Disney
Gale said that one reason the studios kept rejecting the film was that time-travel films were underperforming at the box office. But the other reason concerned the tone, which he explained to Comicbook.com.
“‘This is really a very nice and sweet movie, and we’re looking for stuff more like Porky’s and Stripes and raunchier comedies,'” Gale claimed he heard repeatedly. However, when they took the film to Disney, they got a very different response.
” We had this meeting with this executive over there, and we walked to his office, and he looks at us, he says, ‘Are you guys insane? Are you out of your minds? You think Disney would make a movie like this?'” Gale recalled. “We’re going, ‘What, what, what? What’s wrong with it.’ He said, ‘This is a movie about incest. You’ve got the kid and his mother in the car. That’s incest. We’re Disney. We don’t go there.’”
The Six-Week Blunder and Late-Night Hustle
The other well-known issue the film ran into was having to fire the lead. While Fox was their first choice for Marty McFly, his Family Ties schedule meant he wasn’t available. They hired Eric Stoltz instead, but after six weeks of shooting, they realized it wasn’t working out. Family Ties‘ producers finally agreed to Fox taking the role, but he could only film after the TV series finished for the day. This meant they only had him from 6 p.m. until around 2 p.m.
“Michael had to work through his fatigue,” Dean Cundey, the director of photography, told The Guardian. “He’d be very “up” during a take but then I’d notice him in his chair afterwards, desperately trying not to fall asleep. He was so engaging, though – he really had a great effect on set.”
Despite facing 40 rejections, being deemed both “too sweet” for mainstream studios and “too scandalous” for Disney, and enduring a grueling, sleep-deprived lead actor swap, the filmmakers’ persistence paid off. The chaotic production didn’t hinder the movie; instead, it forged a defining 1980s masterpiece that cemented its place in cinematic history.