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Ming-Na Wen, James Hong, BD Wong, and Izaac Wang Photo: HBO Max
Gremlins, the little movie about a bunch of little green baddies running amok, is getting a bit of makeover—a de-Gremlin-ing, if you will. (We suppose that’s some sort of dehydration process.) No, it’s not the Gremlins 3 Nick Lutsko promised us two years ago. Instead, Gremlins: Secrets Of The Mogwai, the first new piece of Gremlins-related media since 2002's Gremlins: Stripe Versus Gizmo GameBoy Advance video game, is a decidedly more family-friendly interpretation of goblins gleefully killing unsuspecting humans for their own amusement.
While we’re still waiting to see what the titular little green boys will look like, Warner Bros. Animation released images of the people they’ll terrorize. They look like The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker, with its cel-shaded animation.
The cast is obviously exciting. Who doesn’t want to see James Hong, Ming-Na Wen, and BD Wong in a Gremlins? But we’re hoping that a trailer beefs up some of the looniness of the characters. Not to start a Change.org campaign or something, but we want our Gremlins mischievous, and this looks very sweet.
Not sure if anyone’s going to be wild about non-puppet Gremlins—that’s kind of the whole thing. But for what it’s worth, here’s the synopsis:
Steeped in China’s rich culture and mythology, Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai takes viewers back to 1920s Shanghai where the Wing family first discovers the mysterious creature. Sam Wing, the youngest in the family, accepts the dangerous task to take Gizmo home and embarks on a journey through the Chinese countryside. Sam and Gizmo are joined by a teenage street thief named Elle, and together, they encounter—and sometimes battle—colorful monsters and spirits from Chinese folklore. Along their quest, they are pursued by a power-hungry industrialist and his growing army of evil Gremlins.
The series follows Sam Wing (Izaac Wang of Raya And The Last Dragon), the boy who would grow up to be the shopkeep from Gremlins. Thus, it’s only fair to assume that a) Billy’s father, who claimed to come up with the name “Gizmo,” is a straight-up lying sack of trash, and b) Gizmo is more than 60-years-old in the first film and likely older than 70 in New Batch. So maybe Mogwai are the same species as Yoda, after all.
Gremlins: Secrets Of The Mogwai will by heigh-ho-ing its way onto HBO Max later this year.
