In a Broadway season that’s already jam-packed with productions like The Shark Is Broken, Once Upon a One More Time, the return of The Wiz and hopefully more shows about crops (plus a well-timed third season of Only Murders in the Building) there’s one upcoming production that pricks the ears of motoring enthusiasts because a rather well-known car figures prominently. It’s Back to the Future: The Musical.

Opening on August 3rd at the Winter Garden Theater, the BTTF musical was created by the very man who created the original, Bob Gale. Nevertheless, Gale didn’t want a beat-for-beat remake; he wanted to take advantage of the unique format of the theater. But that meant a few things had to change.

“No scene of Doc Brown being attacked by disgruntled Libyan terrorists. (Now Marty speeds off in the DeLorean after Doc is overcome by radiation poisoning.) No set piece in which Marty races through the town square on a skateboard while the meathead bully Biff pursues him in a convertible. (Now the chase occurs on foot at school.) No pet dog named Einstein for Doc Brown. (Sorry, there’s just no dog.)”

Then there’s the matter of the DeLorean. How do you even begin to make that work? You start with a middle-aged Englishman in a coastal town 70 miles east of London.

Before its Broadway debut, BTTF The Musical made its initial run in London’s West End where some of the production’s kinks could be worked out. That included figuring out the DeLorean, a process that began with the show’s propmakers asking Steven Wickenden of Deal, Kent if they could borrow his painstakingly detailed DMC-12 time machine replica.

A few 3-D scans and a few thousand photos later, the prop crew had a basis for their stage model. The finished stage DeLorean (FauxLorean? -Ed.) includes among other things “a device that allows it to spin on its axis (so it looks like it’s doing stunt turns) and pneumatic equipment that lets it tilt in the air (when it crashes into a farmer’s barn)” plus background projections to give the illusion of movement.

This time, though, the DeLorean’s moved for real, from London to New York. Tickets are available through the show’s site, and one can almost sense the inevitability of review pull quotes along the lines of “Fasten your seatbelts for an amazing time—machine!” (Dibs on My Mother The Car for the 2024/25 season! -Ed.)

Buckle Your (DeLorean) Seatbelt: ‘Back to the Future’ Lands on Broadway [via The New York Times]