Joe Dante made a Gremlins prequel show because Gremlins 2 is "sequel-proof"
The first episode of HBO Max's kid-friendly Gremlins: Secrets Of The Mogwai premiered in France this week

We still don’t have a set release date for HBO Max’s upcoming animated series Gremlins: Secrets Of The Mogwai, the first new installment in the beloved horror-comedy franchise since 1990's Gremlins 2: The New Batch. But we do have some new details about its decidedly kid-friendly-sounding first episode, which debuted this week at the Annecy Animation Festival, with series showrunners Tze Chun and Brendan Hay, and original director Joe Dante, on hand to premiere the series.
Which, yeah: Sounds pretty kid focused, as it recounts beloved series hero Gizmo getting grabbed from his magical homeworld by an eagle and taken to 1920s China, where he encounters Sam, the 10-year-old version of mysterious curiosity shop proprietor Mr. Wing from the films. There’s an evil industrialist who wants to capture the Mogwai, a kid thief who teams up with Sam and Gizmo, Ming-Na Wen and James Hong voice performance… It all sounds exceptionally wholesome for the franchise that once gave us Phoebe Cates’ Christmas monologue and the brutally slapstick death of Mrs. Deagle, but so it goes.