Sick of Back to the Future yet? I hope not, but Back to the Future Day, which celebrated the date Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) traveled 30 years into the future at the end of the first film, is now over. It’s a well known fact it was originally going to be Eric Stoltz (Mask) going on adventures with Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd), but the actor was recast four weeks into the shoot. After all these years, we might finally see his performance. Learn more after the jump.

Five years ago we saw glimpses of Stoltz as Marty McFly on the Back to the Future Blu-ray, but no actual full-length scenes. Director Robert Zemeckis wasn’t getting the comedic performance he was hoping for out of the actor, so, after a difficult conversation, he fired Stoltz — replacing him with his original choice for the role, Michael J. Fox.

According to the film’s co-writer, Bob Gale, there’s a chance more of the Eric Stoltz Back to the Future footage will see the light of day.

I’m not going to say never. We did not destroy the footage, because we expect that sometime, in some future anniversary, we may let it get out there. They may see it sometime. I’m not going to say for sure, much less when. But I will say that we had the opportunity to completely destroy it. And we did not. So, it does exist in a vault somewhere.

Most double-dip Blu-ray sets aren’t worth buying, but if the special features on another Back to the Future boxset include more of the original actor’s performance, it’ll be worth the purchase. Gale also had this to say about Stoltz’s serious take on Marty McFly:

I have seen all of the Eric Stoltz footage, and we would not be having this conversation! The movie would have been released. But it would not have caught on the way it did. I don’t think it would have been successful enough to make two sequels.

As for Stoltz, he’s done just fine for himself. He’s a good actor who was simply miscast. It happens, just usually not four weeks into principal photography. In this one interview with Moviehole, he shared his belief that it’s kind of a blessing things didn’t work out.

I would be curious to see [that movie]. You know, it was twenty-something years ago and I rarely look back, if at all, but in retrospect, I think just getting through that difficult period helped me realize how freeing it really was. I went back to acting school, I moved to Europe, I did some plays in New York and I actually invested in myself in a way that was much healthier for me. I would’ve been unable to walk down the street! It’s a whole different life. I was lucky in that way.

[Source: Movieweb]