Back to the Futures Ending Was Changed After It Became a Hit
But thanks to a healthy VHS home video market, they were able to move ahead with a unique plan to fix that. The theatrical release of Back to the Future may have never promised a sequel, but nothing was stopping Universal from changing the ending of the film to include a cliffhanger tease once the movie was on video! So, when Back to the Future came out on VHS, they decided to insert “To Be Continued …” into the end of the film. Problem solved.
Some viewers swore that “To Be Continued …” had always been displayed onscreen at the end of the movie, and had to be assured that it wasn’t. Then, when Back to the Future hit DVD later on, “To Be Continued …” was removed from the film again, adding to further confusion. But at the time, the temporary VHS measure had worked, going some way to assure fans of the first movie that Marty and Doc would soon be going on another, more futuristic journey.
Although Back to the Future Part II ultimately received mixed reviews from critics and didn’t quite top its predecessor at the box office, it still made $332 million worldwide, and became the third-highest-grossing film of 1989. Director Robert Zemeckis has since reflected on the sequel’s release, saying, “They [the audiences] were absolutely surprised by it. The whole 1985 stuff… we went places the audience was not ready to go. That is some of my favorite stuff in the whole trilogy.”
Ironically, Zemeckis also believes that the sequel was poorly marketed, saying that because it was never promoted as the second part of a trilogy, the audience was frustrated by its cliffhanger ending. Arguably, viewers were less excited than when they’d seen “To Be Continued…” at the end of Back to the Future on their tape at home.
“That inspired us to put that Part III trailer at the end of Part II,” he told Amblin Road. “That way the audience would know there is going to be a third one. This is what it looks like, folks. We shot it. It’s really coming. Again, I feel that back then, when movie promotion didn’t have the internet, people weren’t as savvy about what was in the pipeline as they are today. I think it would have been a smarter move to have let people know it was part two of a three-part series.”
But those fans who didn’t mind waiting for the threequel to arrive, and who had seen “To Be Concluded…” splash across the screen on their VHS copy right before the Back to the Future Part III trailer played out, might have argued that the marketing was just right.
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