With every ‘80s movie under the sun being remade, reimagined, rebooted, reincarnated, it can only be a matter of time before Joe Dante’s seminal Gremlins gets a new lease of life. This weekend, Dante is being honoured at Cine-Excess IV, a conference of global cult film traditions in London (“There are a lot of people who take these things seriously, and to find them all in one place is heartening,” says the director) so we took the chance to quiz the chief Gremlin wrangler on the possibility of getting Gizmo out of limbo.
“It’s been heavily booted around on the internet that there is a Gremlins 3 and then somebody said ‘Gremlins 3? Gremlins 3-D! I bet it’s a sequel in 3-D and I bet they’re gonna ask Joe to do it!” Well the answer is no, no and no.”
And before the Zach Galligan purists (you know who you are) breathe a sigh of relief, Dante is not saying never, just not now.
“I’m sure it’ll happen. It’s too valuable a title to not get the remake treatment. I think it will be a remake rather than a sequel. I think they’ll start over and do a remake or a sequel.”
What we definitely will see, later this year, is The Hole 3D, Dante’s first feature film as a director since Looney Tunes: Back In Action in 2003.
“It’s a retro type horror picture, the type of movie that I was doing in the ‘80s,” he told us. “It’s about a bunch of kids who go down to the basement of a new house and find a door with locks on it among the junk in the basement is. Like any respectable movie kids, their mission is to get this door open and see what’s in there. They manage to get the door open and there’s a hole that leads to God knows what. Something comes out of the hole. Of course I couldn’t tell you what...”
To find out what, The Hole 3D opens on September 24. For more info on Cine-Excess IV, go to** www.cine-excess.co.uk**