„Are You Guys Nuts?” One Scene in Back to the Future Disgusted Disney So Much That They Rejected the Movie
Back to the Future had to go a long way to get made. The creators were repeatedly turned down, including by Disney, before they found a studio to take on the project.
Back to the Future is a beloved sci-fi series that whole families enjoy watching. So it's hard to believe that Disney deemed it too “dirty” and for that reason rejected it, abandoning the blockbuster. But that's exactly what happened when, years ago, Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis were looking for a studio to take on the project, and so they met with Disney representatives. One scene was enough to disgust them to the point where they decided that this was not the right production for them.
And which scene is it about? In Back to the Future, a young Lorraine McFly inadvertently takes an interest in her own son, which for Disney was crossing the line of good taste. The plot evokes mixed feelings among viewers as well, so it's no surprise that Disney wasn't convinced by it either.
In 2010, during an interview with CNN, Gale told of the rejection by Disney, which they reached out to after other studios, uninterested in their project, repeatedly said they should take it to Disney (via Collider).
Well, we heard that so many times that Bob and I thought one day, ”What the hell, let's take it to Disney.” This was before Michael Eisner went in and reinvented it. This was the last vestiges of the old Disney family regime. We went in to meet with an executive and he says, “Are you guys nuts? Are you insane? We can't make a movie like this. You've got the kid and the mother in his car! It's incest – this is Disney. It's too dirty for us!”
Disney, therefore, did not become a home for Back to the Future. But despite the controversial story present in the film, it was a huge success. And it owes its very creation to Steven Spielberg, a friend of Zemeckis and Gale. Back to the Future was produced by Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, so the project did not die before it reached the people.