Secret Cinema’s Back to the Future shows get go ahead

Secret Cinema has confirmed it will go ahead with its run of Back to the Future from tomorrow (July 31), following a series of high-profile cancellations.

Founder Fabien Riggall said in a statement: “We are happy to announce that Secret Cinema Presents Back to the Future will go ahead.

“We are extremely sorry for the delayed communications of last week. We know we let our audience down and will do everything we can to make it up to them.”

The immersive cinema company was set to launch its most ambitious production to date last Thursday (July 24). But the event was cancelled just a couple of hours before it was set to begin, disappointing around 3,500 ticketholders.

The same thing happened the following day, informing thousands more that the show had been called off with only a few hours to spare. Shortly after, Secret Cinema canned the Saturday and Sunday performances to avoid a similar last-minute announcement.

But the show will go on from tomorrow night, transporting audiences into the fictional town of Hill Valley - the setting of the 1985 time travel movie starring Michael J Fox - which has been built across a large site in east London.

It is not exactly clear as to what issues caused the cancellations but Riggall told the BBC News website last week that he had not been able to meet technical requirements to satisfy local authorities.

“We’ve built an ambitious show and we weren’t able to get to the position in which we were able to open with the local authorities happy,” he told the BBC.

A total of 17,000 tickets, priced £53.50, were snapped up within four minutes of going on sale in June and all 42,000 tickets sold out within four hours. This led to Secret Cinema extending the run till August 31 with the potential of selling 84,000 tickets in total.

However, around 14,000 ticketholders who were hit by the cancellations have been invited to reschedule for shows later in the run, if they choose not to claim a full refund.

Immersive experience

Secret Cinema presents Back to the Future has seen the fictional town of Hill Valley constructed at a secret location in London. Audiences will wander between 1955 and 1985, and navigate secret alleys and entrances in the town that will allow them to travel to the heady future of 2015.

As in previous outdoor productions such as Dirty Dancing, Grease and Top Gun the event will follow an interactive format of immersing audiences into the world of Back to the Future and Hill Valley in the first half of the evening followed by a screening of the Robert Zemeckis film that includes “extra experiential surprise elements”.

A Battle of the Bands contest will determine who will play on stage each night, as well as a secret headline high profile band. The famous ‘Enchantment under the Sea’ Prom dance will take place at an after party venue near the secret location.

Audience participation will feature heavily throughout each event, with audiences becoming characters inside Hill Valley, zipping between the worlds of 1955 and 1985.