Reboots and remakes have become such a regular part of our culture nowadays that it’s tough to even muster anger or frustration when one comes along that’s particularly irritating. If you can think of a popular film that you love and hold dear, odds are that’s going to be mined for a reboot or remake at some point. That’s just the nature of the game. So when we learned that a new iteration of Gremlins was in the works, it didn't really come as too distressing news.
With the Gremlins redo, we at least know there’s some semblance of continuity with the original as Steven Spielberg and Gremlins writer Chris Columbus are producing the new picture. Seth Grahame-Smith was initially hired to pen a script that eventually stalled, then this April we learned that Disturbia scribe Carl Ellsworth was coming aboard to take a stab at it. Now franchise star Zach Galligan has provided an update on the project by speaking at a Q&A following a screening at London’s Prince Charles Cinema (via /Film), saying he hears the new film be taking a cue from the biggest movie of 2015:
“It’s not going to be a reboot. It will not be a remake in any way, shape, or form. Chris Columbus has come out and said that the first film is very near and dear to his heart and as long as he is alive it will never be remade…So the only thing they will be – and apparently are going to be – doing is something along the lines of like Jurassic World, where it will be 30 years later.”
That’s both similar and a bit different from what Columbus told us earlier this year, when he hinted that the new film would utilize some of the same characters:
"It is real. I am involved. When I finished Gremlins, and the first Gremlins was released, I was asked to write the sequel, and said there was no place else to go. Now this was before the pre-crazy-franchise-era of Hollywood where everything is a franchise. 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.”
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 short of sense of nostalgia we all want and bringing it forward like 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."
It’s possible Galligan is talking about the take that Grahame-Smith developed, or maybe the current iteration of Gremlins 3 does move in a new direction but with a small piece of connective tissue to the originals a la Nimoy in Star Trek (ie. Maybe Galligan shows up to warn the new folks of the dangers of Gremlins).
Whatever the case, I’m kind of curious to see how this comes together. I actually think director Joe Dante’s satirical follow-up Gremlins 2: The New Batch is a better film than the original Gremlins, so I don’t have too intense a connection to this franchise. What do you think, folks? With the inevitable new Gremlins movie, would you rather see a straight-up reboot or a rebootquel like Jurassic World, that acknowledges the events of the first two movies? Sound off in the comments below.
