Caffeinated Clint
According to “Gremlins” writer Chris Columbus, the upcoming reboot will take a cue from JJ Abrams’ “Star Trek” and share ties to the original films whilst powering off in their own direction.
Speaking to Collider, Columbus – who is producing, and possibly directing the first “Gremlins” movie since 1990’s “Gremlins II : The New Batch” – hints that the new film will be (along that “Ghostbusters” reboot) be set in the same universe as the 1989 and 1990 films, and will likely see some of those characters return too, but there’ll also be some new people and plot to focus on.
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.
Sounds like Columbus has plans to bring back, in the very least, Billy (Zach Galligan) – who, dare I suggest, is likely a dad of his own these days? That opens up possibilities. And Columbus is right, audiences do love it when you rip the lid of a can of nostalgia and bring some original faces back for a new film in the franchise – even if it’s been many years, as was the case with “Tron Legacy”, “21 Jump Street” and the aforesaid “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” installments of recent years. “Blade Runner 2” will do the same, and the recently-announced “Alien 5” will bring back ’80s icon Michael Biehn. Even TV’s “The Flash” has been doing that by rerecruiting some of the cast from the original ’90s incarnation. I’d have personally preferred they went the ‘mix the old with the news’ direction with the upcoming “Poltergeist” sequel too – and had Craig T.Nelson’s Stephen Freeling return.
