Hollywood Reporter<\/a> posted:
Everyone knows the classic 1985 film “Back to the Future” featured a boyish Michael J. Fox in a winning performance as Marty McFly.<\/p>\nBut Fox was not the original McFly. In fact, Eric Stoltz was five weeks into shooting the famed McFly role when director and co-writer Robert Zemeckis made a drastic production decision — changing his lead actor.<\/p>\n
Details of the shocking Hollywood switch and never-before-seen footage of Stoltz as McFly are part of the extras package for the “Back to the Future 25th Anniversary Trilogy” to be released on Blu-Ray on Oct. 26.<\/p>\n
Zemeckis says the casting change was “this horrific decision; it was heartbreaking for everybody.”<\/p>\n
Executive producer Steven Spielberg said that Zemeckis consulted him before pursuing the casting change.<\/p>\n
“(Zemeckis) showed me the first five weeks of shooting that he had put together,” Spielberg said. ” And he said, ‘I just don’t think we’re getting the laughs I was hoping we would get.’ “<\/p>\n
Spielberg said he realized his director “was absolutely correct.”<\/p>\n
The rest is pop-culture history. Zemeckis was able to “convince the studio to let me reshoot five weeks of work,” and Michael J. Fox was cast in a career-defining role. “Back to the Future,” released on July 3, 1985, would go on to gross $381 million worldwide and lead to two further sequels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Hollywood Reporter has posted this “Never before seen clip” of Back to the Future with Eric Stoltz in the lead role. Today the Hollywood Reporter posted:Everyone knows the classic 1985 film “Back to the Future” featured a boyish Michael J. Fox in a winning performance as Marty McFly. But Fox was not the original […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[125,138],"class_list":["post-1346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-film-clips","tag-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}