Steve is currently in Las Vegas for CinemaCon, and took some time to sit down to interview Chris Columbus, who was there to promote his upcoming film Pixels. Since Columbus wrote Gremlins and The Goonies and is a producer on any future versions of those properties, Steve asked him about the status of any reboots or sequels.
Here’s the full video of the interview:
Starting with Gremlins, Columbus said that the reboot was seriously moving forward (we reported earlier this month that they have hired Carl Ellsworth (Disturbia) to pen the script), and that what inspired them was finding a way to blend nostalgia with something new.
There’s rumors of a reboot of Gremlins. Is this real? Are you involved?
CHRIS COLUMBUS: 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.
As for whether or not they’ll go the real-time route of the first movie or creating a new universe, Columbus said, “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.”
Moving on to Goonies 2, Columbus said there hasn’t been “as much movement as there’s been on the Gremlins sequel. And Goonies is a much tougher nut to crack for obvious reasons. It actually comes up about every five years. We’re in the thick of it now trying to figure it out.”
Steve mentioned that he heard that original director Richard Donner had come up with an idea that people were happy with it, but Columbus said they still hadn’t reached that point.
“We are still searching, but we are searching very hard to try and make it work,” said Columbus. “But we’re not going to let anybody down. If we don’t feel it’s right—that’s between Donner, Spielberg, and myself—if we don’t feel it’s right, we’re not going to do it.”
And as for title suggestions, Steve asked, “Will it be called Goonies 2: Goonies Never Die”?
Columbus laughed and replied, “If that’s what the fans want, that’s what we’ll call it!”
More with Chris Columbus soon and here's all our CinemaCon coverage.
