Lea Thompson Talks “Back to the Future” Message
“Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”
Hop in the DeLorean, check the plutonium levels and hit 88 miles per hour because we’re going back in time—to July 3, 1985, to be exact—to celebrate Back to the Future.
The iconic film was released 35 years ago, with the time travel epic starring Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd going on to become the highest grossing film of the year, making over $389 million and going on to become a beloved movie franchise.
It’s hard to imagine anyone other than Fox stepping into Marty McFly’s Nike Mags, but another star had actually landed the role and filmed for several weeks before Steven Spielberg, director Robert Zemeckis and co-writer and producer Bob Gale realized they needed to recast their leading man.
Plus, another major star auditioned for the role of Doc Brown, almost landing it when Lloyd initially was going to pass on his career-defining role.
Check out these fun facts about Back to the Future in honor of its 35th anniversary, including which actors auditioned for Marty McFly and Doc Brown and which star ended up suing the studio…
Universal Pictures/Kobal/Shutterstock
1. Gale came up with the idea for the movie while looking through his father’s high school yearbooks while visiting his family and was surprised to see his dad was the president of his graduating class, telling Esquire, “I wondered whether I would have been friends with my dad in high school.”
2. For years, multiple studios passed on the script over 40 times, including Disney, with Gale claiming they said, “Are you guys out of your minds? You can’t make a movie like this here. This is Disney, and you’re giving us a movie about incest!”
3. Not a fan of the title, Universal Pictures head Sid Sheinberg suggested the name be changed to Spaceman From Pluto.
Amblin Entertainment/Universal Pictures/Kobal/Shutterstock
4. John Cusack and Johnny Depp originally auditioned for the role of Marty McFly, but C. Thomas Howell was the finalist for the role, ultimately losing out to Eric Stoltz.
5. Five weeks into filming, the filmmakers realized Stoltz wasn’t the right fit for the role, with Gale explaining to The Guardian, “The humour just hadn’t been coming through with Eric. The studio weren’t happy exactly, but they’d seen the footage so they bit the bullet.”
6. Zemeckis was the one to deliver the news to Stoltz, with the director recalling in the book Blockbuster that it was “the hardest meeting I’ve ever had in my life and it was all my fault. I broke his heart.”
7. Reshooting all of the scenes Stoltz had already filmed added a reported $4 million to the movie’s budget.
Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images
8. Originally the first choice for Marty, the filmmakers worked with the team at his hit sitcom Family Ties to make sure they could have Fox as their leading man. “We would’ve danced naked on his desk to get Michael J. Fox, so of course we said, “Yeah, sure, we’ll adjust our shooting schedule,”” Gale told The Hundreds blog.
9. Fox’s filming schedule was intense: he would film Family Ties during the day and then go right to the Back to the Future set and film from 6:30 p.m. to 2:30 a.m., averaging five hours of sleep a night. “It was my dream to be in the film and television business, although I didn’t know I’d be in them simultaneously,” Fox said during a TV special. “It was just this weird ride and I got on.”
10. There is one scene with Stoltz still in the film. Though you can’t see his face, it’s Stoltz who punches Biff at the diner.
Universal/Getty Images
11. In the original script, Doc Brown was called Professor Brown, with a studio executive recommending the change.
12. Jeff Goldblum auditioned for the role of Doc Brown, according to Gale, who said, “The only other guy we really seriously considered for Doc Brown was Jeff Goldblum. Jeff came in, and…I’m certain we talked about John Lithgow, but I don’t remember if he ever actually came in, or if we met him. But I vividly remember meeting Jeff and liking him.”
13. Lloyd almost passed on the iconic role, hoping to do a play in New York, but credited his wife, Carol, for “reminded me that I always told myself never to turn anything down without at least checking it out.”
14. In an interview with the Seattle Times, Lloyd revealed his two inspirations for Doc: Albert Einstein and Philadelphia orchestra conductor Leopold Stokowski, who had white hair.
Universal Pictures/Kobal/Shutterstock
15. One of the reasons for Doc’s hunched over stance? To help with the 7-inch height difference between the two leads.
16. The Office‘s Melora Hardin initially won the role of Marty’s girlfriend Jennifer, but was recast before she even began filming after Fox replaced Stoltz due to their height difference.
17. In an early draft, the time machine was set to be a refrigerator, but Zemeckis was worried children would accidentally lock themselves in refrigerators, so it was changed to a car.
18. Originally, the studio was hoping Doc’s car would be a Ford Mustang,with the company paying for the placement, but Gale refused, telling AdWeek, “I said, ‘No, no, no, Doc Brown doesn’t drive a fucking Mustang.’ It had to be a DeLorean.”
Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images
19. Huey Lewis, who wrote the hit songs “The Power of Love,” and “Back in Time” for the film, makes a cameo as one of the judges in the band audition.
20. Lewis originally declined to work on music for the movie when he was approached by the director.
21. Originally slated to open in August 1985, test audiences reacted so positively to the movie that the studio moved the release date up. Back to the Future hit theaters nine weeks after completing production.
22.
Universal Pictures/Kobal/Shutterstock
23. Crispin Glover, who played Marty’s father George McFy, didn’t return for the two sequel due to contract disputes, with the actor going on to file a lawsuit after filmmakers used footage from the first film and putting a mold of his face on another actor “in order to fool audiences into thinking I was in the movie,” he said on The Opie and Anthony Show.
Ultimately, a settlement was reached, with The Hollywood Reporter reporting it was for $760,000 at the behest of the company that insured Universal.
24. Lea Thompson credits her turn in 1984’s The Wild Life for landing her the role of Lorraine, Marty’s mother, because “they were looking at Eric Stoltz for Marty McFly, and they were, like, “Who’s that girl?” So that’s how I got the first audition for that,” she told The A.V. Club.
25. In the original script, Lorraine’s name was Meg.
26. For Lorraine’s 1985 look, Thompson’s prosthetic makeup took three and a half hours to apply.
Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images
27. In 2015, footage of Stoltz as Marty was released for the first time in a documentary included on the 30th anniversary Blu-Ray set. “We wanted to soft pedal that,” Gale said of the decision to release a small look at his turn performance. “We didn’t want to make Eric feel bad.”
28. Back to the Future: The Animated series ran for two seasons, airing on CBS from 1991-92.
29. In March 2020, the musical adaptation Back to the Future made its debut in England, with Olly Dobson as Marty McFly and Tony winner Roger Bart as Dr. Emmett Brown.
30. Zemeckis and Gale are firmly against the idea of a fourth film, with the director recently saying on a Zoom reunion with the cast that, “If I had an idea which I could have pitched to Bob [Gale] with a straight face, we would have made it.”
Watch Daily Pop weekdays at 12:30 p.m., only on E!
