A few days ago, Vox’s Todd VanDerWerff tweeted, “We should probably thank the gods there’s not a new Back to the Future coming this fall, with Marty’s kid traveling back to 1985.” It’s the kind of a perfect tweet/encapsulation of the industry at this moment, inasmuch as it’s a terrible idea that any studio executive would greenlight in a New York minute. And come to find out, it’s not that such a movie doesn’t exist because of restraint or good taste; it’s because director Robert Zemeckis simply won’t allow it.
Zemeckis, who directed all three BTTF films and devised the story with screenwriter Bob Gale, told The Telegraph that, as rights holders for the series, they would never agree to a remake or reboot or whatever other screwy idea some schmuck might devise for their “pre-sold title.”
“Oh, God no,” Zemeckis says. ““That can’t happen until both Bob and I are dead. And then I’m sure they’ll do it, unless there’s a way our estates can stop it.
“I mean, to me, that’s outrageous. Especially since it’s a good movie. It’s like saying ‘Let’s remake Citizen Kane. Who are we going to get to play Kane?’ What folly, what insanity is that? Why would anyone do that?”
Why indeed, Mr. Zemeckis. Now, one could also ask why anyone would want to remake Man on Wire as a drama or why anyone would want to make A Christmas Carol as a motion-captured 3D Jim Carrey vehicle—but these are questions for another day, I suppose.