Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly plays his Gibson guitar in Back to the Future. Universal Pictures

'Back to the Future' cast needs your help finding Marty McFly's missing red guitar

Originally posted on Nerdist | By Eric Diaz | Last updated Jun 4, 2025 10:23 PM ET

Forty years ago, Michael J. Fox made cinema history when he shredded his Gibson ES-345 guitar in 1955 Hill Valley in Back to the Future. He couldn’t have known it at the time of filming, but that scene would help make his Marty McFly one of the most iconic movie characters of all time. Sadly, that cherry red guitar went missing not long after, and has remained so. Now, via Entertainment Weekly, we’ve learned about an upcoming documentary called Lost to the Future. And it’s all about the search for Marty’s missing guitar, where he played “Johnny B. Good” for stunned teens at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance. You can watch the teaser trailer below:

Most of the original cast of Back to the Future returned for this documentary, including Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, and Harry Watters Jr. Also involved are original screenwriter Bob Gale and even Huey Lewis. (No Crispin Glover, but that’s not surprising.) The film’s director, Doc Crotzer, said “This is the movie that made me want to be a filmmaker, and the scene that made me pick up a guitar for the first time. As children of the ’80s, it is our duty to take fans of music, fans of the movie, and fans of true crime documentaries with us on this too-crazy-to-believe quest to find our generation’s Excalibur.”

Back to the Future director Robert Zemeckis realized the guitar was missing when they needed it for Back to the Future: Part II. By 1989, it had already gone missing, and to this day, no one has a clue as to its whereabouts. As Michael J. Fox says in the trailer, “It’s somewhere lost in the space-time continuum, or it’s in some teamster’s garage.” Gibson Guitars is enlisting help from the Back to the Future fandom in helping find the missing instrument. They are asking anyone with any information to go online at LostToTheFuture.com, or call/text at 1-855-345-1955. Who knows? Maybe by the time the documentary comes out, it’ll have a happy ending.

This article first appeared on Nerdist and was syndicated with permission.

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