Joe Dante won’t be involved with Gremlins reboot

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

If you’re dubious about the GREMLINS reboot, you’re not alone: Joe Dante, the director of the first two Gremlins films, isn’t so sure it’s a good idea either. And he’s most certainly not going to be involved with the thing.

In an interview with The Playlist, Dante said definitively that his Gremlin-wrangling days are over.

I am not involved with it,” Dante said about the project. “It’s something that we hear about every six months for the past five to ten years. I know there have been many attempts to do it. It’s tricky because the rights are jointly owned by Warner Bros and [Steven Spielberg’s] Amblin, so you’ve got to jump through two hurdles to get your idea approved. “

Dante also expressed skepticism that the new film would work as well as the previous features. Can’t blame him.

I know a lot of very well known people have come up with ideas for another ‘Gremlins’ movie and not of them have gone. I do know, however, that there’s a script being written now and the tricky thing is that I’m not sure that the people making the movie now understand what the original appeal was of the first movie, which was not beloved by the studio until it started making money.

When they started making a sequel, they didn’t understand what we had done on the original to make it successful,” he remarked. “So they hired me to come back and make the sequel. Because nobody understood it. So it will be very interesting to see what they come up with.”

Very interesting indeed. Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg were reported to be the writers on the reboot, and earlier this summer it was rumored original writer Chris Columbus and producer Steven Spielberg were attached. But it remains to be seen if this proposed revamping of the franchise ever actually makes it out of the box.