SFX's 2023 in review: Gremlins: Secrets Of The Mogwai, the animated prequel to the '80s hit

The following feature first appeared in the June 2023 issue of SFX magazine. You can purchase SFX magazine here. 

Aside 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 the 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 the 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 the owner of the antique 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.” 

 Reinventing a classic

“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. “We saw [this] as having the ability to travel back to a time when people really knew where the Mogwai came from and excavating that mythology. So there’s a lot that we’re doing in the first season that talks about maybe some things you didn’t know about the Mogwai, and also the origin of the Mogwai themselves.” 

“We did also check with Joe Dante,” Hay casually namedrops, “because he’s been consulting on the project throughout. We did ask him, ‘Did you have an origin for the Mogwai? Is there anything you ever want to do with the Mogwai that you didn’t get to in the films?’ Joe has been wonderful, and super supportive, and also shared with us that anything that he had ever wanted to do, or could do, with Gremlins was in the two movies. He’s like, ‘We left nothing on the table, we used everything we could.’ The only things that they didn’t do were because the puppets wouldn’t enable them to. So he, over time, gave us some gag pitches and stuff like that, for jokes to do with the Gremlins.” 

Hay says that of the questions the original movies posed, “this is kind of our chance to dive into those and try to answer or expand on them.” Chun adds that the series is “gonna go way back” – which means not just seeing the “ancestral homeland of the Mogwai”, the Valley of Jade, but also looking at how they came to be there. “What other stories can we tell in this world?” is what he pondered at the series’ inception. “There’s just so much to mine. We definitely tried to tell the story within the specific backdrop and cultural mythology of China. But there’s a lot of years between 10-year-old Sam Wing and the Mr Wing that you see in the movies…” Hay expands slightly. “There’s plenty of stories in all directions. We definitely hint at some of the ones that take place before and show little bits of things. But there’s a lot left for us to dive into if we can.” 

Speaking of other direct connections to the movies – of which there are, as you’d expect, many – they’re not all just visual, with Billy actor Zach Galligan returning. “We also have another cast member from the original Gremlins movies who pops up in season one,” Hays teases. “But then also, it’s [connected] design-wise, like our design team bringing in Gizmo’s box from the original film, so we get to see what that actually means to Sam Wing and Gizmo and how that became Gizmo’s home away from home. “There’s a lot of more subtle Easter eggs,” he adds, “like using some of Jerry Goldsmith’s original score, or new recordings of it from our composer and her orchestra, and then my favorite one…” he trails off. “I’ll let it be a surprise!”

Give us more Gizmo

When the show was announced, it was revealed that it was a two-season order from the off, meaning more adventures are in store for Gizmo. “Season two will bring them to a new place,” Chun says. “But there’s a lot of backdrops to explore and a lot of places for our main characters to go on adventures. So even as we’re writing season one, even in the very first pitch of season one, we talked about what a season two could look like. We were really glad that our partners at Warner Bros and Amblin and Max were excited to see what adventures they go on next. We all hope that this is just the beginning for our crew.” Hay laughs. “We’ve talked about ideas that take us definitely decades further and further ahead to kind of eventually sync up into the film. It’d be, like, 10-plus seasons to hit the ’80s from where we are, but we definitely have ideas for other places we want to go with Sam and Gizmo and Gremlins in general.” 

As for progressing beyond the original movies, the pair agree that a continuation of the Gremlins mythos is not their path. “I would love to see Gremlins 3,” Hay says, “[but] I would not want to actually be the person who has to make it. As a fan, I would absolutely love it. “Joe has a great quote that he did his best to make Gremlins 2 sequel-proof, that you couldn’t make another movie after Gremlins 2. That movie is just such a perfect cap to everything. Yeah, that’s a challenge for someone else!” 

On the challenges of working on a globally-loved brand, the pair say having the support of Amblin from the beginning was key. “That definitely gave us the confidence to tell a story that was also within that vein of not just epic action adventure, with some scares and real-life stakes, but really within the Amblin tone of the movies that we grew up with,” Chun explains. “Things that we referenced a lot were Raiders Of The Lost Ark and The Goonies – that feeling of excitement, of adventure and wonderment. This show really has a lot of the DNA of those movies that Brendan and I grew up with.” Hay agrees. “Diving into anything you love and getting to play with something that you care about, there’s some pressure, there is hesitation, but it’s also just so much fun. To play with all the Amblin films that we love in the sense of tone – not that we’re taking things from them – but just getting to play with things you love… It’s hard not to find joy in that.” 

Keeping things family friendly  

Another thing the Amblin ’80s adventures have in common is the scares – something that this series doesn’t shy away from. Often in quite surprising ways… “One of the things we talked about a lot from the very beginning was making sure that it was a co-viewing show, and that kids could watch it, but parents could watch it with their kids,” Chun says. “We wanted to create something in the show that was for everyone so that the whole family can watch it together, even teens, and that meant pushing some of the scares."

“One of the things we found with Gremlins was – as two people who were also traumatized by Gremlins while we were at the age that our viewership might be – one of the things that’s really helpful in the Gremlins tone is that it can be really scary because after you’re done being scared, it’s also cut with some laughter. So you’re actually able to make it a little scarier because there’s the safety net of, okay, you’re scared about it, but it’s also weird and hilarious at the same time.” 

There’s one scene in particular, which we won’t spoil, that Chun jokes were “definitely worth the six months of back and forth with [the network’s] Standards and Practices”. Hay explains further. “If you rewatch the original films, with the exception of maybe Mom in the kitchen with the Gremlins, which is wonderfully gory, it’s more implied violence than graphic violence. “That actually became something – we can honor the original films this way by playing by those rules. It’s horrible what happens, but also not shown. It’s more implied. Get a good reaction shot, get a good aftermath shot, things like that. So that became our way to make sure we’re still traumatizing children today without being super-graphic.” 

“When we were writing this, we wanted to make sure that every season felt as big and epic as a blockbuster movie, and for that the stakes at the end have to be really big,” Chun says. “It’s not just China, but it’s also the world.” Hay adds: “As we get towards the end of this season, we definitely had an episode that made everybody involved just go, ‘Oh my god, that’s shattering. I can’t believe you guys did that.’ So that’s cool.” 

Hay cites the Spider-Verse and Puss In Boots movies as examples of similar “different styles and advanced storytelling” that “tackle weighty themes and have real stakes and consequences.” He smiles. “We hope to be a part of this growing movement of animation that’s truly for everyone, not solely kids or gross-out adult stuff, and give it to everyone.” Finally, how does it feel to be the ones to resurrect a criminally overlooked franchise? Chun chuckles. “Hopefully we can make up for some lost time.”

Gremlins: Secrets Of The Mogwai is available to stream on BBC iPlayer and MAX right now. For more check out our list of upcoming TV shows heading your way in 2023 and beyond.