Back to the Future
1985 film directed by Robert Zemeckis
Back to the Future is a 1985 American science fiction film directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale. It stars Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover, and Thomas F. Wilson. Set in 1985, it follows Marty McFly (Fox), a teenager accidentally sent back to 1955 in a time-traveling DeLorean automobile built by his eccentric scientist friend Emmett "Doc" Brown (Lloyd), where he inadvertently prevents his future parents from falling in love – threatening his own existence – and is forced to reconcile them and somehow get back to the future.
Gale and Zemeckis conceived the idea for Back to the Future in 1980. They were desperate for a successful film after numerous collaborative failures, but the project was rejected more than forty times by various studios because it was not considered raunchy enough to compete with the successful comedies of the era. A development deal was secured with Universal Pictures following Zemeckis's success directing Romancing the Stone (1984). Fox was the first choice to portray Marty but was unavailable; Eric Stoltz was cast instead. Shortly after principal photography began in November 1984, Zemeckis determined Stoltz was not right for the part and made the concessions necessary to hire Fox, including re-filming scenes already shot with Stoltz and adding $4 million to the budget. Back to the Future was filmed in and around California and on sets at Universal Studios, and concluded the following April.
After highly successful test screenings, the release date was brought forward to July 3, 1985, giving the film more time in theaters during the busiest period of the theatrical year.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Back to the Future” is 1985 film directed by Robert Zemeckis. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Back, Future and film, not as a finished interpretation.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q91540. VIAF identifies the subject as 201891914. The Library of Congress control number is no96055682. Authority coordinates are 34.141, -118.350. 7 of 9 selected statements include explicit references; 7 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1985, 1955, 1980 and 1984.
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This entry incorporates text from “Back to the Future” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.