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Great Scott, Supa-Fans! There are few movies that hold as beloved a place in the pop culture landscape as Back to the Future. Hailed by audiences and critics alike as one of the greatest movies to ever blast its way out of the 1980s, the time-travelling shenanigans of Marty McFly and Doc Emmett Brown continue to strike a chord with viewers more than 40 years later.
However, in a different timeline, audiences may have been faced with a very different movie indeed. With Supa-Star guests Christopher Lloyd, Donald Fullilove, and Harry Waters Jr. set to join us for Supanova in Sydney (19–21 June 2026) and Perth (27–28 June 2026), we thought it might be timely to charge our flux capacitor up to its requisite 1.21 gigawatts and take a peek at what almost happened in another timeline.
We Almost Got A Very Different Marty McFly
Most Back to the Future fans will already know that Michael J. Fox was not the first actor cast to play Marty McFly. While Fox was indeed director Robert Zemeckis’ first pick for the role, his duties on Family Ties made it difficult for him to commit, and the filmmakers had to look elsewhere – including Ralph Macchio from The Karate Kid.
Eventually, actor Eric Stoltz was cast, and filming had even begun with him in November of 1984. However, Zemeckis quickly determined that he was not the right fit and, instead, went back to Fox, making the concessions necessary for him to film both Family Ties and Back to the Future simultaneously (adding an additional $4 million to the budget in the process).
The DeLorean Didn’t Exist In Earlier Drafts
It’s hard to imagine Back to the Future without the iconic DeLorean making its way up to 88 miles per hour and shooting off into the space-time continuum while leaving flaming tyre tracks behind.
Except the DeLorean didn’t even exist in the earliest drafts of the movie. In screenwriter Bob Gale’s initial draft, the time machine was originally a laser-gun type contraption that Doc Brown would later attach to a lead-lined refrigerator.
Why a fridge, you ask? Because the original plan to get Marty home from the 1950s involved driving the fridge into a nuclear test site on the back of a truck, and being close enough to a nuclear detonation to get the requisite power needed to charge the device.
While that idea would later be scrapped altogether, producer Steven Spielberg did eventually return to the idea of someone hiding in a lead-lined fridge during a nuclear detonation and used it for the opening sequence of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
The DeLorean Was Almost A Ford Mustang
When the idea to transform the time machine into a car came about in later drafts, Zemeckis suggested the UMC DeLorean because its gullwing doors would look decidedly alien to people in the 1950s, and it could easily be mistaken for a UFO.
However, when the movie started moving into production, the Ford Motor Company offered producers $75,000 to use a Ford Mustang instead. Bob Gale, however, was less than enthusiastic about the idea, and the DeLorean stayed.
The Movie Almost Had A Different Name Altogether
It’s hard to imagine a timeline where no one even knew the name, Back to the Future, but Universal Pictures executive Sid Sheinberg originally pressed to change the movie’s title to Space Man from Pluto and “avoid the feeling of a ‘genre’ time-travel movie.”
Steven Spielberg replied to Sheinberg’s request in hilarious fashion, simply replying to the original memo with: “Sid, thanks for your most humorous memo. We all got a big kick out of it. Thanks, Steven.”
You too can find out what it’s like to go back in time when Christopher Lloyd, Donald Fullilove, and Harry Waters Jr. join us for Supanova in Sydney (19–21 June 2026) and Perth (27–28 June 2026).
