Zach Galligan Offers ‘Gremlins 3’ Update; “Warner Bros. Definitely Wants It”

Getty Images

How has this not happened by now?!

With nostalgia dominating the box office at the moment, it’s kind of odd that a franchise like Gremlins hasn’t yet been brought back from the dead. It would seem that Warner Bros. is leaving guaranteed money on the table (a whole lot of it) by not rebooting the series, but franchise star Zach Galligan is still confident that it’s only a matter of time. Over the course of the last few years, Galligan has been almost single-handedly keeping the Gremlins 3 hope alive, and in a new interview with Bleeding Cool this month, he provided the latest on the long-gestating project.

Galligan told the site that if we get anything more from the series, it’ll be a sequel:

I think you can tell what’s happening with Gremlins 3 the same way you could tell with Gremlins 2. It’s the same people and they tend to work the same way. There is a huge time gap but it’s Warner Bros, Spielberg and Chris Columbus. Now, Chris Columbus didn’t have anything to do with Gremlins 2 – because by his own admission he didn’t see a franchise. He kind of regrets it I believe, but he was ‘one and done.’ I don’t think he cared for Gremlins 2 and the direction some of the characters went in, so he’s kind of wrested control back. Everything I’m quoting is stuff he’s publicly said: ‘There will NEVER be a remake. There will NEVER be a reboot. There will only be a SEQUEL.’

What would a potential Gremlins 3 look like? Galligan told the site what he knows:

[Columbus] has been aggressively working on a Gremlins 3 that takes place in present day. He tantalizingly says there will be some NEW characters and some OLD characters – I guess in the style of a Force Awakens type sequel. One thing we know for sure is they have a writer on board. The only insight I can give is the following: There was a 6 year gap between Gremlins and Gremlins 2; most of that time was spent with them writing and rejecting ideas and re-writing. One of the ideas that was rejected was ‘gremlins in Vegas.’ They went with that for 18 months and felt it was too expensive. Eventually they came up with the tower idea, where essentially I’m working for Donald Trump, our new President! That took six years to happen. Carl Ellsworth has been apparently working on the script for a year and a half now. If no new names start appearing on the IMDB listing then that means they like the script. If new names start appearing, y’know Kevin Smith appears, it means it’s back in rewrites with a new vision.

All things considered, Galligan seems sure that Gremlins 3 will eventually happen:

Warner Bros definitely wants it, Chris Columbus wants to do it because he’d like to undo the Gremlins 2 thing as he wasn’t thrilled with it, and Spielberg wants to do it I imagine – because he’s Spielberg – and why wouldn’t he want to do it. Once he’s found the right script he can attach his name and make a ton of money. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Hey, if the creatures are practical, you can count me in.