09-05-2025
Back to the Future co-writer Bob Gale talks translating movie to stage musical
(Watch the full interview below)
GREENVILLE, S.C. (WSPA) – Back to the Future is headed to Greenville in a way you've never seen before: as a musical.
With the show set to open at The Peace Center on May 13, 7NEWS anchor Diane Lee spoke with one of the creators of the original movie trilogy about getting those movies made and the jump to Broadway.
Bob Gale, co-writer of the films, said he worked closely with the team behind the musical.
The process of translating film to stage began nearly two decades ago, in 2006, and did not get off the ground until 2020.
In the interview, Gale discusses inspiration for Back to the Future: his father's high school yearbook.
'I thought, 'Gee, if I want to school with my dad, would I be friends with him?'', said Gale. 'And boom, that's when I got hit by a lightning bolt of an idea to say, 'What if a kid could go back in time and go to high school with his father?' And when I told the idea to [Back to the Future director and co-writer] Bob Zemeckis, he loved it and he said 'What if mom went to the same high school and all the things she said she never did, she did them.''
Gale said that the idea to make a stage musical dates back to 2005 when Zemeckis' wife was watching The Producers.
According to Gale, she mentioned to her husband that Back to the Future would make a really good theatrical musical.
That kicked off a process that led to Gale and Zemeckis bringing Alan Silvestri, the composer of the films, and songwriter Glen Ballard on board to work on the show.
'We thought, 'This is going to be easy because everyone knows what Back to the Future is!' But it turned out that, here we were starting this out in 2006 and we didn't get the show off the ground until 2020,' Gale explained. 'So it took us longer to get Back to the Future: The Musical on stage than it did for us to make all three Back to the Future movies starting from August 1980 when I had the idea. So, go figure.'
The show finally moved forward after Gale said he and Zemeckis found British producer Colin Ingram.
'Back to the Future is a tricky thing,' explained Gale. 'You've got to have the DeLorean. You've got to figure out how it's going to go 88 miles an hour. You've got to have the clock tower sequence. There's a lot of big set pieces in the story that you wouldn't normally think should be on stage or even could be on stage.'
'We put together a team of people who loved the movie and understood that this was necessary,' Gale said. 'They raised the bar on what is possible. When you go see the show, you're going to be blown away as to how we did some of this.'
The show, Gale said, is designed so that people will enjoy the show whether they've seen the movie or not.
'We've had people tell us that they like the musical better than they like the movie,' said Gale.
Watch the full interview in the video player below:
The North American tour will be in Greenville from May 13 through May 18. Tickets are on sale on the Peace Center's website.
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