Although we haven’t heard much lately regarding a prospective Gremlins 3, fans can be confident that the third instalment will adhere to the spirit of the first two movies if it ever materialises. The first Gremlins was the film that made director Chris Columbus famous because Steven Spielberg read the horror-tinged screenplay and came up with the name on the spot. The 1984 horror comedy with a Christmas theme, produced by Spielberg, written by Christopher Columbus, and directed by Joe Dante, garnered an immediate following of enthusiastic fans.
Gremlins 2: The New Batch, which Dante later made, was a more satirical prequel, although Columbus has been working on a Gremlins 3 for the past few years. I asked Columbus if Gremlins 3 might happen when we spoke for an episode of the popular online portal’s Collider Connected that was filmed during the press day for his new Netflix movie The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two (which he co-wrote and directed), and he provided an update:
“I’d be thrilled to do that. There is a script already in existence because I wrote it. Right now, we’re just trying to determine when the ideal moment would be to make that movie while we iron out some rights difficulties. I would still approach it the same way, using real puppets rather than CGI. Perhaps having — as you may recall, the first Gremlins featured one stop-motion scene, but I doubt I’d employ much CGI in Gremlins 3.
