Joe Dante’s Gremlins is one of the best ‘80s movies, so when Gizmo got the spinoff treatment with his own animated series last year, fans were enthralled to see Mogwais in animated form. As the second season of Max’s Gremlins series arrives to those with a Max subscription this week, I asked the TV show’s producers, including Dante, whether they think another fuzzy live-action Gizmo could be in the works, too. Their answers were rather insightful.
The Gremlins Producers Talk About Gizmo Returning To Live-Action
The new season of Gremlins is titled The Wild Batch, which feels like a clear reference to the hysterical Gremlins sequel, The New Batch, from 1990. After the first season uncovered the Secrets of the Mowgai through a story of Sam, a 10-year-old boy living in East China in the 1920s, The Wild Batch has Sam and his friends venturing to San Francisco for another adventure involving the more villainous versions of Mogwais.
While talking about the new season, executive producer Brendan Hay shared why he’d prefer Gizmo and the Mogwai to remain in animation from here on out. In his words:
For myself, and this is partially selfish, no, just because I do think there's so much more you can do in animation versus live action. Like, Joe [Dante] has detailed just how difficult the puppets were. Like there was just the restriction of technology here. We absolutely still have restrictions. There's still pencil mileage, there’s still just still trying not to break your artist and your crew. But, there's just a lot more you can do. Like we can be a lot freer and broader with the types of gags we're trying to pitch for evil Mogwai, there's a lot more than acting that you can actually rest on Gizmo’s very tiny, barely existent shoulders because you can get it across in animation.
On the other paw, executive producer and showrunner Tze Chun had another perspective on the whole thing. Here’s what he said:
I'm down for whatever. Whatever Gremlin stuff we can get, whether we create it or not. And, you know, Warner Bros. had four different Batmans at one time. Let's do everything!
Hay then agreed that “the idea of competing Gizmos” was a fun idea. Joe Dante chipped in with these words:
Gizmo meets Batman, I can see it.
Hey, if Joe Dante is on board, so am I. Now, let’s talk out their comments, because there’s a lot there to unpack.
The Gremlins Made Some Solid Points About The Present And Future Of Gizmo
First off, the reason I asked the question in the first place is because these guys have handled the spinoff of Gremlins so well. It makes me only want to see more animated shows based on classics from the era. So, I wanted to get their take on the future of channelling the original version after they spent their love and care on animated Gizmo. Everyone made solid points.
As Hay mentioned, it’s absolutely not easy to pull off a movie with puppet Mogwais, and at first the original film even tried using monkeys instead at first, perhaps to alleviate all that. We’ve seen other friendly creatures from fantasy and horror be pulled off in various ways over the years, such as through The Mandalorian’s Grogu (a.k.a. Baby Yoda) through the work of puppetry and animatronics, so it wouldn’t be impossible for Gizmo to enter the real world through an updated version of the means it did before. There’s CGI too, but that’s a bit less desirable, isn’t it?
As the Gremlins producers seemed to agree on, the TV show doesn’t have to operate as the sole return to the franchise. They are happy to share the character should Warner Bros. decide to. After falling in love with Gizmo again in this series, I’d personally love to see more iterations, and the Gremlins TV show only opens the door for that.
You can check out Gremlins: The New Batch on Max starting October 3.
