The 10 words that saved ‘Back to the Future’ from disaster: “My creative input was backing the boys”

Posted On July 3, 2025July 3, 2025

Blockbuster cinema was gifted one of its greatest-ever movies when Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future was released in cinemas on July 3rd, 1985, and ironically for a film that ended with one of its characters saying they didn’t need roads to get where they were going, it wasn’t an easy one to the big screen.

Zemeckis and his trusted writing partner, Bob Gale, thought their idea for a time-travelling hybrid of odd-couple buddy caper and ambitious sci-fi fantasy was a winner, but nobody in Hollywood seemed to agree. The script was rejected dozens of times, with studio executives refusing to believe the relatively unproven pair had a story that appealed to a mainstream audience.

Funnily enough, it was the director’s first feature that wasn’t written alongside Gale that gave him the clout to push forward after Romancing the Stone became a box office hit and the winner of the Golden Globe for ‘Best Picture – Musical or Comedy’. Still, it wasn’t exactly plain sailing from there.

The unsung hero of Back to the Future was Steven Spielberg, who’d enlisted the Bobs to pen his first major misfire, the wartime comedy 1941. He believed in its potential, and with his Amblin production company having recently inked a development deal with Universal, the soon-to-be classic finally got the green light.

However, there were still hurdles left to jump. “My creative input was backing the boys,” Spielberg said, playing down his involvement. “My creative input was giving them everything they wanted and making sure they could tell their story unhindered. My job was running interference for them, getting the money from the studio, and delivering the freedom to make their movie.”

The biggest obstacle to navigate was Universal boss Sid Sheinberg, who gave Spielberg three notes when he read the screenplay. Two of them were quickly agreed to, but the third was non-negotiable on Zemeckis and Gale’s part. Professor Brown was renamed Doc Brown, and his pet chimpanzee was replaced by a dog, both of which were the right calls in retrospect.

“He hated the title,” Zemeckis recalled of the third and final point. “But we stuck to our guns on that.” Sheinberg was adamant that the picture be renamed Spaceman from Pluto, which is objectively terrible and nowhere near as good as Back to the Future. He was the only person pushing for the change, but because he was the boss, he could dig his heels in if he had to.

That’s where Spielberg came in. He exchanged memos with Sheinberg to guarantee the Bobs would get to call their movie what they’d always wanted to call it. In reply, Spielberg set the stage by saying to the executive, “Thanks for your most humorous memo,” before signing off with the ten words that would save Back to the Future from the grubby fingerprints of studio meddling: “We all really got a big laugh out of it.”

It was reverse psychology at its finest, with Gale saying that “Steven knew that Sid was too proud to admit he’d meant it seriously.” Just like that, Spaceman from Pluto was out and Back to the Future was set in stone, opening the door for a timeless Hollywood classic to forge ahead with all guns blazing.

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