A year ago came word that Warner Brothers was looking at bringing director Joe Dante’s classic Gremlins back to audiences with a remake of the 1980s horror comedy. Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg were attached to produce the new version.
And then came silence… There was no further word on the project, not even if there had been a writer brought aboard. And if you’re looking for someone to ask what is going on with the Gremlins reboot, don’t ask franchise creator Dante, because he is not involved.
Speaking with IndieWire, Dante explained he is out of the loop on any potential new Gremlins project –
I am not involved with it. It’s something that we hear about every six months for the past five to ten years. I know there have been many attempts to do it. It’s tricky because the rights are jointly owned by Warner Bros and [Steven Spielberg’s] Amblin, so you’ve got to jump through two hurdles to get your idea approved.
Dante also went on to state that this is not the first time that the studio has tried to remake his film and that all the previous attempts have stalled for the same reason.
I know a lot of very well known people have come up with ideas for another ‘Gremlins’ movie and not of them have gone. I do know, however, that there’s a script being written now and the tricky thing is that I’m not sure that the people making the movie now understand what the original appeal was of the first movie, which was not beloved by the studio until it started making money.
When they started making a sequel, they didn’t understand what we had done on the original to make it successful. So they hired me to come back and make the sequel. Because nobody understood it. So it will be very interesting to see what they come up with.
Can Grahame-Smith and Katzenberg succeed where others stumbled? We’ll be watching, but I would like to hear an explanation for why no one has reached out to Dante yet.
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