Chris Columbus, writer of the original ‘Gremlins,’ has given an update on what we can expect from the upcoming take on the film. Not only has he confirmed that the movie which Carl Ellsworth is writing has been fast tracked, but that he is still on board and that quite a bit of progress has been made! The interesting part is that Columbus is describing the film as not quite a remake of the first film, which could either be good or catastrophic.

His exact statement on the film is as follows:

“It is real. I am involved. When I finished Gremlins and the first Gremlins was released, I was asked to write the sequel and said there was no place else to go. Now this was before the pre-crazy-franchise-era of Hollywood where everything is a franchise. So obviously a long 30 years has passed, and I thought, ‘Okay, we can do this. We can actually find a way not to remake the first movie, but to take those characters and do something interesting.

I realized, not from the Star Wars phase, but from J.J. [Abrams’] other movies, when he did Star Trek, he has a sense of taking that sort of sense of nostalgia we all want and bringing it forward like he brought Leonard Nimoy into the first Star Trek and that to me was why we connected to that and it was painfully obvious when we saw the Star Wars trailer recently that when you saw Han Solo and Chewbacca, we all had tears in our eyes because we want that feeling again.

So I thought, ‘Okay, it’s cool.’ If we can pull it off—if we can create that feeling but deliver something new to the audience, then maybe we can do a really terrific Gremlins reboot.”

So it does look like a full on reboot, that isn’t a remake, but will tug at our heart strings with nostalgia. I’m quite curious if he can indeed pull that off.

Of course not everyone is quite as involved from the first two films. According to the original director Joe Dante when asked if he was involved at all in the new film he stated that:

“No, because I don’t own the project. It’s owned by other people.”

When heads butt over creative differences and you don’t own the property, things can go south rather quickly in Dante’s mind. With my general stance on reboots I can’t really argue with him. In fact, in his argument he cites one of the films I agree shouldn’t have been redone:

“They remake pictures that people just didn’t want to see remade. Did anybody really want to see another RoboCop?”

We’ll see if there is really a want for a ‘Gremlins’ reboot soon enough. For now, though, at the very least the original writing staff is quite excited about the prospect.

Are you looking forward to more ‘Gremlins’? Do you think Columbus or Dante are in the right on this one? Share your thoughts below!

Source: Dread Central, Cinema Blend