It’s been thirty years since Gremlins 2: The New Batch hit cinemas. It’s an excellent and extremely weird movie, though only just made its budget back. Despite the franchise being on ice, the cute Mogwai and the Gremlins haven’t been forgotten, being referenced in adverts, in comedy sketches and proving extremely memeable online. Next year, the mischievous creatures are making a comeback in HBO Max animated show Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai. But could this series kick off a whole new wave of popularity for the franchise? Perhaps.
Star Zach Galligan took part in a 30th anniversary watch party for Gremlins 2 last night and said he thought Gremlins 3 was looking likely.
“You have to figure that they’re using the animated series as a stepping stone to the larger endgame, which is a live-action Gremlins movie. That would be my assumption, and it’s really not that much of a stretch to think that that’s what they’re doing.”
Galligan then went on to discuss what he’d like to see in a hypothetical Gremlins 3, saying:
“I would like to see some kind of reunification with Billy and Gizmo. The relationship between them is kind of the heart and soul of both movies,” he says. “I would also like to see some expansion of some pivotal ideas in the series … I think we should see some misapplications of the rules; I’d like to see what happens as various liquids hit mogwais, if it causes strange things to happen or mutations.”
He’s also got some really neat ideas on how they could show us something new in the Gremlin life-cycle, explaining:
“We see the Gremlins go from the equivalent of caterpillars to butterflies; going from the mogwais to the gremlins. That’s one transformation. Is that the only one? There are all sorts of creatures that go through multiple metamorphoses. The question is: Is there a stage after Gremlins? What would it be? What would it look like? What would it encompass? Are there female mogwai? Is Gizmo gonna end up with a little mate? Wouldn’t that be a cute ending, the two of them in the cage purring with each other? There’s all sorts of ways you can go with it.”
Right now, we don’t have a release date for Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai other than that it’ll air in 2021 on HBO Max, but here’s hoping it proves popular enough that we see Gremlins 3 get the green light. There simply aren’t many franchises with this specific tone, though I just hope any future movie sticks to creating puppets for the Gremlins rather than going fully CGI.
