In an age rampant with sequels, prequels, and the importance of franchised IP, Back to the Future remains untouched. Back to the Future Part III hit theaters in 1990, and since then, that’s been the end of the series. Fans have always wondered about why there wouldn’t be another installment when every other beloved franchises seems to keep going back to the well, so on The Collider Podcast, we asked our guest, Back to the Future trilogy co-writer Bob Gale, why exactly there won’t be a Back to the Future 4.

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Image via Universal Pictures

Gale explained there was a creative aspect and then the rights aspect. First, the creative answer:

“We told a complete story with the trilogy. If we went back and made another one, we’d have Michael J. Fox, who will be sixty next year, and he has Parkinson’s Disease. Do we want to see Marty McFly at age sixty with Parkinson’s Disease? Did we want to see him at age fifty with Parkinson’s Disease? I would say ‘No, you don’t want to see that.’ And you don’t want to see Back to the Future without Michael J. Fox. People say, ‘Well, do it with somebody else.’ Really? Who are you going to get? All you’re gonna do is beg comparisons to the originals, and you’re not going to match up. And we’ve seen this repeatedly with sequels that go back to the well after many, many years, and they go ‘Ah, well, The Phantom Menace, maybe my life would have been better if I hadn’t seen it.’ There are a lot of extra sequels like that. We didn’t want to be those guys who did a movie that was basically a moneygrab. Universal says to us, ‘You’d guys would make a whole lot of money,’ but we’re like, ‘Well, we’ve already made a whole lot of money with these movies, and we like them just the way they are. And as proud parents, we’re not going to sell our kids into prostitution.’”

Then he went into an explanation about the rights:

We have an understanding with Spielberg and Amblin that there would never be another Back to the Future movie without our blessing or being involved. So it’s not going to happen.

Personally, I think that’s a relief. We don’t need a fourth Back to the Future movie. The trilogy is pretty much perfect as it is, and we don’t need a fourth installment dragging things down, especially for the reasons that Gale illustrates.

For more from our interview with Gale, check out this week’s episode of The Collider Podcast.