Is The Gremlins Reboot On Hold?

As Hollywood continues cutting a swath through classics of yesterday and today, revving up their reboot machine to run on the pulverized remains of your childhood, we all dream of a brief respite from seeing our favorite films turned into not-so-favorite ones for fun and profit. Now we might have some hope for at least one terrifying childhood classic: the prospective reboot of Gremlins might be placed on indefinite hold.

The Gremlins reboot has been in a questionable area for years now. Steven Spielberg was of a mind to produce the film, with Chris Columbus taking on directorial duties instead of Joe Dante, the original director of the first two Gremlins. Seth Grahame-Smith, the screenwriter behind Dark Shadows and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, was working on a new script that would bring us back to the world of Gremlins thirty years after the original. However, now Grahame-Smith seems to be saying that the film is on hold into the foreseeable future.

Here’s what he told EW (via /Film):

I think we just ran out of steam. It’s one of those things where everybody got busy doing other things. It’s something I would love to come back to, but right now Steven’s making two movies back to back and Chris Columbus is busy. We’re all taking a five-minute break on that.

The two films that Spielberg is working on are an as-yet untitled Cold War thriller, followed by The BFG. That will certainly keep him busy for awhile, right?

While I would certainly welcome a new Gremlins, especially if it took the form of a sequel rather than a proper “reboot,” I find it hard to get excited about a film that would involve neither Joe Dante nor practical effects. What makes the first two entries so enjoyable, beyond their utterly insane B-movie plots, are the lengths to which practical effects can be taken to build some very funny, very ugly little gremlins. Somehow I find it hard to believe that CGI could carry off the same charming effect.

Nevertheless, we might still be in for a new Gremlins someday – and we will let you know when that happens.