Again - I’m not suggesting we take a wrecking ball to Joe Dante’s movie. Leave the original alone. Wrap it in bubble wrap and place it gently on the nostalgia shelf. What I’m suggesting is a brand new Gremlins movie. One that builds on the legacy, not buries it under a CGI mountain.
Think about it. Gremlins 2 already broke the mold. That movie was completely unhinged. It was barely a sequel and more of a “What else can we do with these things inside one building?” brainstorm session gone off the rails. And I love it for that. But instead of getting weirder and more meta, why not bring it back to its roots?
Picture this: a Christmas horror-comedy for tweens and teens. The Five Nights at Freddy’s crowd. Kids who are into Slender Man and creepypastas and spooky TikToks, but still sleep with the light on. You make it scary enough to keep them on edge, silly enough that they’re not traumatized, and nostalgic enough that their parents are excited to come along for the ride.
It practically writes itself. A kid finds a Mogwai - maybe he rescues it from a sketchy pet shop, maybe he finds it hiding in a dumpster, maybe his weird uncle smuggled it from an auction in Chinatown, I don’t know, we’ll workshop it. He brings it home. He names it. He bonds with it. And then, like every child who has ever been given instructions, he breaks every single rule within 48 hours. The Mogwai gets wet. Then they get fed after midnight. Then things go very bad.
Suddenly, we’ve got a gremlin infestation, but this time it goes viral - it goes BIG!. The town is overrun. The City is overrun, The state is overrun. The army is called in. Helicopters! Chaos! Gremlins on scooters! But here’s the twist - the army wants to destroy all of them. Even the good one. Even the new “Gizmo.” And now the kid has to protect his fuzzy friend and escape across the country E.T.-style. Tell me you wouldn’t watch that. Tell me you wouldn’t buy the merch. Tell me you wouldn’t drag your kids to the midnight screening and whisper, “This is how we used to do it, back in the day.”
And don’t tell me we can’t do it justice visually. We can do so much more now. We’re living in the golden age of digital puppetry and VFX. Give me practical effects enhanced by smart CGI. Let the Mogwai be cuter than ever. Let the Gremlins be nastier. You want one that eats protein powder and gets buff? Go for it. One that live-streams the destruction? Absolutely. We can blend old-school chaos with modern flair and still keep that chaotic, gremlin-y charm.
Look, I’m not asking for much. I just want a new Gremlins movie that remembers what made the first one great, builds something fun and fresh, and gives us another reason to gather in a movie theater and scream at the screen. Keep the humor. Keep the horror. Keep the rules. And for the love of Spielberg, give me that magical mix of scary, silly, and slightly inappropriate that kids love way more than they’re supposed to.
So yeah. Maybe I’m insane. Or maybe I just miss little monsters with attitude and a flair for mischief. Either way, Hollywood - you’ve remade everything else. Maybe it’s time to revisit something that actually deserves a sequel.
Just don’t feed it after midnight.
