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There’s a lot of reasons films fail at the box office. Sometimes it’s the runtime, a problematic star, inadequate promotion, or a project failing to entertain the audience. And sometimes it’s pop superstar Madonna.

Speaking to a crowd at GalaxyCon Columbus 2024, Billy Peltzer actor Zach Galligan recalled how Gremlins 2 was positioned to take the franchise to new heights – until Madonna came along.

“I have very mixed feelings about Gremlins 2, because there is sort of Gremlins 2 as a movie, and then there’s Gremlins 2 impact on the franchise. And you just have to be honest and say that the financial failure of Gremlins 2 killed the franchise,” Galligan says.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch was originally set to premiere in May 1990, but high test audience scores convinced the studio to take a gamble.

“It was a huge disappointment when Gremlins 2 came out and tanked. Especially since it was supposed to open May 3 or 4, opposite very weak competition. The Goldie Hawn and Mel Gibson movie Bird on a Wire, which barely even anyone remembers. It would have killed them. But the two gentlemen who were running Warner Bros. at the time in 1990, they had a screening up in San Francisco, and the test scores were unlike any test scores they had ever seen,” Galligan recalls.

“They were like 98s, 99s, almost perfect scores. They thought to themselves, ‘Oh my god, this is going to be even bigger than the first one.’ There was a movie coming out at the time called Dick Tracy with Warren Beatty and some young singer named Madonna.”

For context, it’s important to remember how big Madonna was in 1990. She was a cultural phenomenon, and more of less the Taylor Swift of Generation X. Not only did she have the power to top the music charts, but she also had the power to topple the Gremlins franchise.

 “They moved [Gremlins 2] from May 5 to the middle of June right in the thick of all these movies, opening right opposite Dick Tracy because they got into a, shall we say, a bit of a measuring contest with people at another studio. I’ll let you guess what they were measuring. Literally after they moved and announced how proud they were with plans of moving it, Warren Beatty came out and said he was dating Madonna. If you remember her Sex book came out where she was naked through most of it. She’s the biggest star on the planet.”

Hollywood trades began writing stories about Beatty and Madonna’s romance, and Dick Tracy coverage began taking all the oxygen from Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Dick Tracy became a hit, breaking box office records for Buena Vista Pictures, and Gremlins 2 performed so badly that it killed the franchise.

“We just got killed by Dick Tracy at the opening, and that basically was the end of the live-action franchise.”

Earlier this year Deadline reported that a third Gremlins movie is currently in development. Hopefully there are no surprising developments in Madonna’s love life to kneecap this one.

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