It does look as though, after 40+ years of creative freedom, Robert Zemeckis’ career has finally hit a wall. It was a good run while it lasted. Zemeckis has delivered many cherished audience classics such as “Back to the Future,” “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” “Forrest Gump,” “Contact,” and “Cast Away.”
Last month, the usually-busy Zemeckis told the WTF Podcast that he currently has no projects lined up for his next film, and went on to blame it on the current state of the industry:
Things are slow […] There’s a strange thing happening that I’ve never seen before which is that nobody is in a hurry to make anything [..] I think nobody knows what to do. What do you make? What do you do?
I don’t buy that excuse. Fact is that Zemeckis, whose films have grossed over $4.4 billion worldwide, has had five straight commercial and critical failures (“Here,” “Pinocchio,” “The Witches,” “Welcome to Marwen,” and “Allied”). His last big hit, with critics and audiences, was 2012’s “Flight.”
It’s now come to the point where Zemeckis is willing to go as far as to ask Universal if he could direct a movie adaptation of “Back to the Future: The Musical.” That’s what he told Happy Sad Confused’s Josh Horowitz during a recent chat:
I would like to do “Back to the Future: The Musical.” Just like [Mel] Brooks did The Producers. I would love to do that. I think that would be great… I floated that out to the folks at Universal. They don't get it. So, nothing I can do.
Do you blame Universal for not wanting to give Zemeckis the go ahead on this one? It would have been a terrible idea to bring back Marty McFly for song and dance numbers.
“Back to the Future: The Musical” is an actual Broadway play, but it was recently announced that the show would be closing down in January 2025 due to low ticket sales.