Specifically, obsessive collector Ian Grant, whose Gremlins Museum touts itself as “The Largest Collection Of Original Gremlins Movie Props In The World.” (Including animatronic Gizmos and restored copies of full-body Gremlins puppets; watching a video of Grant giving a tour of his various Mogwai and Bat Gremlins, it’s genuinely pretty cool.) As noted in an extensive summary on the Museum’s site, Grant recently got his hands on a “holy grail” for Gremlins aficionados, two VHS tapes—sent by Dante himself— containing a rough cut of pretty much everything that the director shot for the film. Grant has since had the film restored and lightly edited for sound and lighting, and has now organized a showing of the movie in Los Angeles earlier this week—complete with Dante himself on hand to introduce it.
Who was, possibly, a little sheepish about the whole thing: No director really likes having their raw footage shown, especially in a film with lots of tricky puppet effects like Gremlins. Dante noted that the version Grant got his hands on features a lot of early subplots that were in Chris Columbus’ script, but which were cut for pacing. (In this version, the movie’s first actual Gremlin doesn’t show up until more than an hour in.) Dante did seem a little touched by the dedication, though, thanking Grant while cautioning audiences not to take this version of the movie “with them” after viewing it.
Warner Bros. has been trying its damnedest, in recent years, to capitalize on this apparent need for ever-more Mogwai; the studio created an animated TV prequel for HBO Max, Gremlins: Secrets Of The Mogwai, a few years back, while it announced in 2025 that it was formally working on a Gremlins 3. (The Instagram post showing off the assembly cut screening noted that the screenwriters for the film were apparently in attendance.) Meanwhile, it’s not clear yet what Grant intends to do with the new footage from the original movie: In his write-up of the find—which also includes descriptions of several deleted and extended scenes—he makes it clear that he can’t just post Amblin and Warner Bros.’ property online, but did hold out hope for future fan screenings of the extended version of the film.
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