The Back to the Future franchise is an American comic science fiction-adventure film series written and directed by Robert Zemeckis, produced by Bob Gale and Neil Canton for Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, and distributed by Universal Pictures. The franchise follows the adventures of a high school student, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox), and an eccentric scientist, Dr. Emmett L. Brown (Christopher Lloyd), as they use a DeLorean time machine to time travel to different periods in the history of Hill Valley, California.
The first film was the highest-grossing film of 1985 and became an international phenomenon, leading to the second and third films, which were back-to-back film productions, released in 1989 and 1990, respectively. Though the sequels did not perform quite as well at the box office as the first film, the trilogy remains immensely popular after a quarter-century and has yielded such spinoffs as an animated television series and a motion-simulation ride at the Universal Studios Theme Parks in Universal City, California; Orlando, Florida (now closed); and Osaka, Japan, as well as a Microsoft Windows, Macintosh, iPad, PS3, and Wii video game. The film's visual effects were done by Industrial Light and Magic. The trilogy was nominated for five Academy Awards all together, winning one (Best Sound Editing).
