This past February brought news that Warner Bros. had, after years of speculation about more sequels or a reboot, decided to make something new set in the world of chaotic creature featureGremlins. That something was an animated prequel TV series, and it's moving forward at the company's planned streaming service WarnerMedia.
Titled Gremlins: Secrets Of The Mogwai, it'll spin the clock back to 1920s Shanghai, where a 10-year-old Sam Wing (the character played as an old shop owner in the original 1984 film and its 1990 follow-up by Keye Luke), first meets a young Mogwai called Gizmo. Along with a teenage street thief named Elle, Sam and Gizmo take a perilous journey through the Chinese countryside, encountering, and sometimes battling, colorful monsters and spirits from Chinese folklore. On their quest to return Gizmo to his family and uncover a legendary treasure, they are pursued by a power-hungry industrialist and his growing army of evil Gremlins.
Cold Comes The Night writer/director Tze Chun (who has TV bona fides via shows such as Gotham and Once Upon A Time) is running the show, and he's nabbed a series order from the streaming service for an initial season of 10 half-hour episodes. Amblin is involved in producing the show, but there's no sign of whether original director Joe Dante will be part of it.