If you were heartbroken to hear that Joe Dante's seminal holiday horror comedy Gremlins (1984) was on the track to being remade, you can cling to some hope that characters from the original film (perhaps both human and otherwise) will be involved in the new entry to the beloved franchise. In a recent interview, Chris Columbus—who wrote the original Gremlins and will produce the new film—shared details that hint at the Gremlins reboot being more along the lines of J.J. Abrams' Star Trek films and upcoming Star Wars movie in terms of mixing familiar faces with new characters. It sounds like this new Gremlins film could be more of a sequel than a remake.
Collider spoke with Columbus at CinemaCon about the Gremlins reboot, a project Warner Bros. recently hired Carl Ellsworth (Goosebumps movie, Disturbia, Red Eye) to write. Columbus discussed revisiting the idea of a Gremlins sequel after thinking there was no gas left in the franchise's tank after the first film (Charles S. Haas scribed the 1990 sequel, Gremlins 2: The New Batch):
"So obviously a long 30 years has passed, and I thought, “Okay, we can do this. We can actually find a way not to remake the first movie, but to take those characters and do something interesting.”
Columbus touched on how he'd like to do what Abrams has done with his Star Trek films and upcoming Star Wars movie—bring back original characters in new stories populated by new characters:
"I realized, not from the Star Wars phase, but from J.J. [Abrams’] other movies, when he did Star Trek, he has a sense of taking that sort of sense of nostalgia we all want and bringing it forward like how he brought Leonard Nimoy into the first Star Trek. And that to me was why we connected to that and it was painfully obvious when we saw the Star Wars trailer recently that when you saw Han Solo and Chewbacca, we all had tears in our eyes, because we want that feeling again.
So I thought, okay, it’s cool. If we can pull it off—if we can create that feeling but deliver something new to the audience, then maybe we can do a really terrific Gremlins reboot."
Columbus also discussed how much of the original Gremlins story could be included in this new take on the franchise:
“We’re going to incorporate some of it, but there are going to be some new characters as well. I can’t talk a lot about it. I’m sworn to secrecy.”
Does this mean we'll see the return of Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan) and Kate Beringer (Phoebe Cates)? Only time will tell, but it looks like this new Gremlins movie could respect the previous entries (or at the very least, the first film) and perhaps even continue the story arcs of key characters.
When Columbus went on to talk about a potential Goonies sequel in the Collider interview, he even referred to the Gremlins project as a "sequel" rather than a "reboot" or "remake", so there is a possibility that this new film won't be a top-to-bottom reimagined, "no looking back at the past" Gremlins film. Stay tuned to Daily Dead for further updates on this in-development Gremlins project. For those unfamiliar with the 1984 classic, here's the synopsis and trailer:
"When a man brings home an adorable creature from Chinatown as a Christmas present for his son Billy, the shopkeeper's sage advice -- no snacks after, no water, mood lighting only -- goes unheeded. As a result, devilish green creatures with a million vices take over the small town on Christmas Eve."