UNLEASHING THE BEASTS

AFTER 33 YEARS, THE GERMLINS FRANCHISE IS REBORN AS PREQUEL ANIMATION SECRETS OF THE MOGWAI

- DARREN SCOTT

SIDE 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 set in the early 1900s, against the backdrop of China and the associated mythology that Chun was brought up on.

“One of the things that we talked about was how the spirits and creatures from Chinese mythology that are swirling around our main characters as they go on this epic journey tonally are close to Mogwai, meaning that they’re weird and scary and funny. But also they all have their own unique personalities.” “Amblin, as a partner, gave us the keys to the Gremlins franchise and actually really encouraged us to create a mythology around the Mogwai,” Chun explains. “Obviously, in the original movies there’s not a lot of explanation of how they got there.