There’s a lot of love out there for the Amblin movies of the 80’s, and along with Goonies and Back to the Future, one of the biggest and most controversial Amblin films was Gremlins.
Although it’s pretty tame by today’s standards, parents were outraged their kids were seeing these mean, green little creatures being blown up in the microwave and getting chopped up in the blender, but it was a lot of fun to be in a packed theater listening to everyone recoil in disgust when these things happened.
In fact, it was the outrage over Gremlins and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom that helped create the PG-13 rating. Despite all of this, Gremlins was a big hit, raking in $153 million at the box office, and it was still a pretty good flick the last time I checked it out.
Now there are reports that Gremlins, like almost every single movie ever made, may end up rebooted, although some fans were hoping for another installment instead of starting over from scratch.
As GiantFreakinRobot confirms, negotiations are going on right now with Warner Brothers and Amblin to make another Gremlins flick. Apparently there have been efforts in the past to redo Gremlins, but those deals fell through. This time, however, it sounds like the deal could happen.
Intrerestingly, there were previously plans to make a Gremlins 3 that would be in 3D, but who knows how far these current negotiations will go, and if 3D will ever be part of the remake plan. Robot also made a good point that a new Gremlins would be a whole different movie today in the age of CGI. The original film was done with animatronic puppets, and it was quite a task to make them look lifelike.
Of course, CGI is much less expensive, but it’s a danger to lean on it too much if a Gremlins reboot does go forward. While there is definitely a lot of 80’s geek nostalgia for Gremlins, the second film, The New Batch, flopped in 1990, so it remains to be seen if Gremlins mania will come back around again one day or not.
