Sydney’s season of Back to the Future: The Musical will now mark the end of the show’s Australian run, after producers abandoned plans for a national tour and confirmed the production will close at the Sydney Lyric Theatre on 25 January 2026.
High operating costs, softer-than-expected ticket sales and a challenging economic climate for large-scale theatre have stymied plans to take the musical – adapted from the 1985 film – to other state capitals. A season to Melbourne had been flagged, with discussions underway for further engagements elsewhere. But as Sydney’s box-office pattern became clear, taking the large and expensive show on the road was deemed too risky, with losses already mounting.
Speaking to News Corp mastheads, co-producer John Frost of Crossroads Live Australia said discounting tickets had not solved the problem. “The box office really didn’t move. We did a discount sale about three weeks in and it did well, but the minute we stopped discounting, the sales dropped back down.”
Roger Bart as Doc Brown and Axel Duffy as Marty McFly in Back to the Future: The Musical. Photo © Daniel Boud
The show opened in Sydney in September 2025 after a major marketing push that positioned it as a blockbuster event. Featuring a full-scale DeLorean that appears to fly, a large cast and band, Back to the Future garnered favourable reviews. Limelight’s Jo Litson described it as “a hugely entertaining, buzzy evening that thrills at times with its inventive staging, while putting a smile on your (speedometer) dial.”
The musical had already proved a substantial hit overseas. After opening in Manchester in 2020, it transferred to the West End in 2021, broke box-office records at London’s Adelphi Theatre and won the Olivier Award for Best New Musical. Its 2023 Broadway run lasted nearly 600 performances and earned two Tony Award nominations.
But spectacular does not come cheap. The Australian company includes about 25 performers – among them US star Roger Bart as Doc Brown – as well as a substantial orchestra and technical crew. Complex set pieces and extensive sound and lighting systems pushed running costs to a level requiring near-capacity houses to break even. Those audiences did not consistently arrive, and some performances played to 25–30 percent houses at the 2000-seat Sydney Lyric.
Producers said the decision to end the run in Sydney was necessary to protect the jobs of cast, crew and theatre staff and avoid further financial damage. Updated marketing now emphasises that Back to the Future: The Musical is a Sydney-only engagement and must close on 25 January.
“I have had a few big flops before,” Frost said. “But this has the potential to lose enormous amounts of money and put a lot of people out of work.”
