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©1995-99, To Be Continued...
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Universal & Zemeckis put sequel plans on hold?
Proposed sequels wounded but still alive — for now
Well, the very latest information about the proposed BTTF4/5 sequels based on Ed Solomon's treatments earlier this year is below, courtesy of one of our inside sources. Unfortunately, the news isn't looking very good at the moment, at least for the current incarnation of the sequel plans. Our source seems positive and upbeat, so hopefully this is just a minor setback.
"Something happened with BTTF4/5 over last weekend, but no one knows for sure what happened exactly. It looks like Solomon's treatments might have been jettisoned, leaving Mr. Rossio and Mr. Elliott out of the BTTF loop altogether. Two things I know for sure happened:
- Robert Zemeckis, whose involvement in BTTF4/5 has been that of the observer thus far, did not approve of Solomon's direction. This is perfectly normal in the scheme of things — at least how this business works. We're still in pre-pre-production, so it was one of those variables that we've mentioned before. Anything can happen, like having a creative consultant throw the in-process draft out completely. I think this might have occurred.
- One of your fears might have come true: Universal and Amblin (in terms of their consortium) are shying away from sequels. I think even Elliott and Rossio's own Zorro 2 will be stalling out in the next month. Universal is having too much success these days — I think they were two flops shy of throwing BTTF4/5 onto the fast track, actually. Beyond Viva Rock Vegas and Jurassic 3, Amblin will be doing original projects (Twister 2 was also dumped off the slate last weekend) primarily."
"I don't know where this leaves BTTF4/5 right now, but it's not an enviable place for any project, to be sure. What will happen next (your next question, right?) is one of two things:
- BTTF4/5 will sit on the sidelines for a little while, nurse its bruises, and regain interest on the Universal side. It'll go into early production again. Zemeckis will approve/disapprove of what follows.
- The other option is BTTF4/5 will simply cease to be. In fact, I'm not even sure if BTTF4/5 is a good moniker anymore, seeing how that was based on Solomon's two-part treatment."
I'm really not surprised to see Universal riding the success wave as they usually do. They have been on the upswing for most of this year, however, this month has been anything but banner business for the company. As a matter of fact, of the three films Universal released in August, two have been major flops. This past weekend's release of Dudley Do-Right was far from being any kind of hit, pulling in a paltry sum of only $3 million, failing to even break the weekend's top ten (it came in at #11). Mystery Men to date has only been able to scrape up $26.6 million after 3½ weeks in release. Only Bowfinger will probably make back its original budget, which has taken in $44.8 million after 2½ weeks in release. It's a mediocre hit, but no reason to be scrapping other projects over. Anyway, I hope whomever it was at Universal who was initially
responsible for commissioning the Solomon treatments will stick to their guns and believe in this project. It's a guaranteed blockbuster anyway you look at it — but they can't keep postponing this indefinitely.
DVDs, Games & a Film Festival
There are still many things in the pipeline for the BTTF franchise in terms of other media projects, and I'm convinced that once these start rolling out, eyebrows will be riding high on Universal executives' foreheads, and sequel talks will resume once again. Among these media projects coming soon, are the long-awaited highly-anticipated DVD release of Back to the Future, and the reported new games for CD-ROM and Nintendo. Here's what our source had to say about these upcoming projects, as well as some new information about a trilogy showing at a film festival next year:
- "A demo DVD of BTTF was seen floating around the office lately, so it's pretty much a done deal. The Stoltz footage is not included, sadly, but the transfer is incredible. Very, very sharp. I've never seen it 1.85:1 before (no laserdisc players in my past!), so that was a treat. The sound is superb, too. I caught about 20 minutes of it in one of our screening rooms last week. It has an unofficial (but solid) street date of November 23rd. Part II and Part III are hitting VHS on December 7th (widescreen/pan), but no DVD transfers are in the works yet. Kinda strange, but you never know."
- "I keep hearing about the BTTF Trilogy PlayStation game, but I could swear it was an N64 platform I saw. It's a PC game, too. That'll be out next June. The other CD/DVD-ROM game is called "BACK THROUGH THE FUTURE", will be released in July and will cover the making-of, design, and everything else about the trilogy. It's very, very comprehensive and resembles not the X-Files program, but an MGM Interactive James Bond Dossier program from 1996 — in terms of the layout, interactivity, and comprehension. Exciting!"
- "Universal is hosting a film festival in L.A. in March 2000 — they did this two years ago, I think, and showed newly struck prints of Blues Brothers, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and Jaws. This is one is similar, but they're slated to show all three Back to the Future's in a row there. The digitally remastered DVD soundtrack for the first BTTF will be used in striking the new theatrical print, so you'll probably be seeing BTTF in DTS or Dolby Digital in 2000."
Sounds like the next eleven months are going to be quite exciting for us all, regardless of whether or not the new film(s) are actively being developed. As of this writing, Universal Studios Home Video has not yet announced their November slate, however, other sources have also confirmed the November 23rd release date. The folks over at DVD File interviewed a representative for Robert Zemeckis recently and learned that he had completed his contributions to the DVD a year ago. I can confirm this, as I was informed of the interview conducted last September by a source very close to the production just a few days after Zemeckis was interviewed for the new documentary by Laurent Bouzereau.
I'm a bit surprised now to learn that the sequel DVDs won't be coming along in December as originally reported, but this could change. Actually, I hope that they'll postpone them so they can do them right. Universal's gonna be overwhelmed with the demand for BTTF1 on DVD, so hopefully that'll urge them to do similar collections for the sequels. Afterall, BTTF2 has a ton of deleted scenes that we'd like to see added back in, and BTTF3 has its share too, so hopefully the opportunity to do them right won't be wasted.
Next summer's definitely going to have some BTTF games on everybody's want list! All of these interactive collections will be released just in time for the series' 15th Anniversary, and hopefully, these won't be the only items coming our way. Surely, somebody somewhere's going to finally release an official set of action figures...
— Stephen Clark
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