ASIDE FROM A FEW COMPUTER game attempts, some cartoon cameos and a 2021 Mountain Dew advert, Gremlins has survived – both as malevolent creatures and a franchise – relatively untouched since sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch in 1990. One might almost say the mythos of the creatures has been something of a secret.
Executive Producers Tze Chun and Brendan Hay will finally change all that with new animated prequel series Gremlins: Secrets Of The Mogwai. This origin story shows how the 10-year-old version of Sam Wing – who grows up to become owner of the antiques shop where we first meet the Mogwai in 1984 – meets Gizmo, and begins a series of adventures for the pair.
Hay says that they “just tried to find ways to translate that into an untold tale that was still connected to the Gremlins movies. Tze landed on something that I found incredibly useful and have repeated all the time since then – telling a kids’ story with real-world stakes.”
The tale is