Michael J. Fox and Gibson have officially launched a search for the guitar Marty McFly played in the Enchantment Under the Sea dance scene in the beloved film Back to the Future.
“We need your help, we’re trying to find the guitar I played in Back to the Future,” Fox told fans in a video released on YouTube to support the search. “It’s somewhere lost in the space-time continuum, or it’s in some teamster’s garage.”
Gibson, which made the Cherry Red ES-345 guitar Fox played in the 1985 blackbuster, also released a “wanted” style poster that asks: “Have You Seen This Guitar?”
Alongside Fox, co-stars Lea Thompson (Lorraine Baines-McFly) and Christopher Lloyd (Emmett Brown) encouraged fans to send any tips they might have to a website the brand had set up or to call a tip line. Additionally, Huey Lewis, whose music is famously featured in the film, also made an appearance in the video.
Ultimately, the search for the axe will be featured in an upcoming documentary the company is producing called Lost to the Future.
“We’ve been looking into leads and rumors for a long time, and as you can imagine, we’re talking 40 years ago, so memories fade,” the film’s director, Doc Crotzer, recently told The Hollywood Reporter. “We weren’t in the era of digital trails, or of receipts and things like that. There are conflicting reports too. You can find about as many different rumors as you can people.”
Gibson purposefully initiated the search for the guitar, which has been missing for 40 years, this year to coincide with the film’s 40th anniversary.
Speaking of Back to the Future, Bob Gale, one of the screenwriters of the Robert Zemeckis-directed Back to the Future trilogy, recently insisted there will “never” be another Back to the Future… anything.
Speculation ramped up after the co-creators of Cobra Kai, the TV series follow-up to the Karate Kid movies, discussed a possible Back to the Future TV series.
But Gale insisted there is no future for the franchise.
“I don’t know why they keep talking about that!” he told People. “I mean, do they think that if they say it enough times, we’re going to actually do it?”
“I mean, it’s like they know in every interview people say, ‘Oh Bob, when is there going to be a Back to the Future 4?’ Never. ‘When is there going to be a prequel?’ Never. ‘When is there going to be a spinoff?’ Never. It’s just fine the way it is. It’s not perfect, but as Bob Zemeckis used to say, ‘It’s perfect enough.’”
Image credit: Gibson TV / YouTube.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
