Michael J Fox has pitched a wild idea for a possible reboot of the beloved Back to the Future franchise.
In a recent interview, Fox spoke candidly about his thought on a remake of his star-making films and his role as the time-travelling teen Marty McFly, in a generation when movie reboots are all the rage.
It came as the 61-year-old actor also opened up about the string of painful injuries he has suffered in just the past year in his long-running battle with Parkinson’s disease.
“I actually had this thought that if they did the movie again, they should do it with a girl as Marty,” Fox told Entertainment Tonight.
“There’s something about [the franchise] that connects with people on every level. I just feel like it will come around again.”
Unfortunately, the idea appears unlikely to get off the ground. It was quickly scotched by co-writer Bob Gale. He said he and director Robert Zemeckis had “no plans or desires to make another Back to the Future movie – not a Part IV, or a remake of Part 1″.
“Nor does Universal or [producers] Amblin [Entertainment] have any such plans,” Gale told the BTTF website as far back as 2010.
“How do we know? Because, per our contracts with these companies, no Back to the Future sequel or remake can even be scripted without discussing it with us first. No such discussions have taken place. We are very proud of the trilogy as it stands and we want to leave it as is.”
A few years later, on the 30th anniversary of the first film in 2015, Zemeckis was just as adamant. No reboot or remake could “happen until both Bob and I are dead”, he said.
“Then I’m sure they’ll do it, unless there’s a way our estates can stop it,” he told The Telegraph.
“I mean, to me, [a remake is] 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?”
Fox reveals painful injury history
Speaking to People magazine, Fox said he had endured many painful injuries in the past 12 months, as well as grieving the death of his mother in September.
“I broke my cheek, then my hand, then my shoulder, had a replacement shoulder put in and broke my [right] arm, then I broke my elbow,” he said.
“I’m 61 years old, and I’m feeling it a little bit more.”
He also contracted an infection after surgery on his broken hand, leading to temporal balance issues and repeated falls. Fox said the ongoing issues were frustrating.
“I was never really a cranky guy, but I got very cranky and short with people,” he said.
“I try to nip it in the bud. I always think of these aides who work with me. And I often say to them: ‘Whatever I say, just imagine I said please at the beginning and thank you at the end’.
“Just take a second and absorb that I might have said that if I was more myself, but I didn’t, so I apologise.”
Earlier this month, Fox and his Back to the Future co-star Christopher Lloyd, who played the eccentric “Doc” Emmett Brown shared an emotional reunion, 37 years after the blockbuster movie debuted.
Fans of the 1985 sci-fi comedy were treated to a moving moment as the duo took the stage and shared a touching hug at a New York Comic Con panel, as the crowd erupted into a round of applause.
