The Nacelle Company once again demonstrates their pop-culture genius with A Future on Stage: The Making of a Broadway Musical. The film dives headfirst into the production of Back to the Future: The Musical, and it’s an obvious labor of love for director Brian Stillman and everyone else involved. And the documentary makes very clear why this is a story worth telling.

Back to the Future: The Musical is the perfect project to do a “making-of” movie about. It covers the phenomenon of adapting existing properties for the stage, particularly from the 1980s and 1990s (like the upcoming The Lost Boys, or Heathers: The Musical, or the Karate Kid project still in development). But there are also extensive technical elements that add a “how did they do that?” element to the story. There’s a lot within this production to discuss, so it needs more than just a standard talking-head documentary.

It’s fascinating to realize that the production history of Back to the Future: The Musical goes back almost 20 years. The movie brings in so many of the film franchise’s biggest names, as audiences probably won’t know how much overlap exists between the movies and the musical. It’s Back to the Future co-creator Bob Gale who wrote the book for the musical, and thus also drives the documentary. Viewers will become Bob Gale fans by the end credits, if they’re not already. Yet audiences get to hear from other major names, including Gale’s cohort Robert Zemeckis, composer Alan Silvestri and of course, Michael J. Fox.

There’s something very charming about these filmmakers who knew nothing about Broadway musicals, who weren’t ashamed to admit they didn’t know anything, and educated themselves on being part of the stage world. This is not a bunch of Hollywood people trying to just pick up their vision and rubber-stamp it on the stage; these are folks who wanted to create something specific to live theater, and were willing to learn and make changes for it. They also found unique ways to preserve the film’s DNA (wait for the portion about how the iconic Back to the Future theme was incorporated).

That points toward an important distinction to be made here: A Future on Stage is a film made for Back to the Future movie buffs, not Broadway enthusiasts. It’s the one significant caveat with the documentary. The interviews cover questions that people who haven’t seen a musical would have, so theater buffs may already know some of that information. And since the development process was so long, the film doesn’t spend as much time as it could have on the Broadway musical. The bulk of the movie is about the transition from films to stage, and the original West End production that won an Olivier Award (the British equivalent of the Tony Awards).

It’s a missed opportunity, because the Broadway cast are a delightful collection of performers, and there’s so much more that could have been done with their interviews. Aside from Roger Bart and Casey Likes, who play Doc Brown and Marty McFly respectively, the other actors’ stories feel only partly told. They speak a little about how their performances compare to their film counterparts, but there could be another half-hour, probably, on the specific choices they made for their roles, their favorite memories, or even how the Broadway run evolved; the documentary ends with a gala performance in July 2023—about a week before the show’s opening night.

That being said, Back to the Future movie fans will walk away from A Future on Stage with a better appreciation of live theater. And theatergoers who saw (or may still see; the national tour is still going) Back to the Future: The Musical will be impressed by different elements they probably didn’t think about. For example, how major of a role Grammy Award-winning songwriter Glen Ballard played in the musical, beyond co-writing the score. This paints a vivid picture of how many people it takes to launch a Broadway production, and viewers will get a lot of joy just out of hearing the process—which is the sign of a brilliant documentary. It’s about the journey, not just the destination.

A Future on Stage: The Making of a Broadway Musical may not be comprehensive, but that’s okay. It will delight Back to the Future fans who are curious about this latest extension of the franchise. And like all of The Nacelle Company’s projects, this movie has a clear sense of what fans want and how they want it; it has a fun lightness to it, just like the movies, with brightly-colored graphics and visual aids. It finds the adventure in this story, just like the adventure that Marty McFly went on. There could easily be a Part 2 of this documentary… but the best thing one can say about it is that it deserves a Part 2.

Hopefully, Nacelle will produce more Broadway content after this movie. There aren’t a lot of Broadway shows with connections to the pop-culture IP that Nacelle is so good with, but A Future on Stage also shows that Nacelle could make some great Broadway documentaries that would be more engaging than the usual stuff. And Broadway certainly deserves more films like this. But that’s an idea for, well, the future.

A Future on Stage: The Making of a Broadway Musical is now available on all streaming platforms. Photo Credit: Courtesy of The Nacelle Company.

Article content is (c)2020-2026 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.