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If there’s one thing Hollywood loves, it’s reboots. Bonus points if it’s a classic ‘80s movie. Just look at The Karate Kid, Robocop, Ghostbusters, and…well, I think I’ve made my point. However, there’s one ‘80s film that you will never see on this list. Gremlins hit theaters in 1984, followed by a sequel, Gremlins 2: The New Batch in 1990. Since then, the franchise has been largely dormant, with the exception of an animated series on Max.But don’t hold your breath looking for a reboot, because Gremlins screenwriter Chris Colombus won’t let it happen.

Speaking to a crowd at GalaxyCon Columbus 2024, Billy Peltzer actor Zach Galligan revealed why Warner Bros. will never reboot Gremlins. Hint – it helps when the original writer owns part of the rights.

“I can tell you this, you will not have a Gremlins reboot, because Chris Columbus owns part of the rights and he blocks it,” Galligan says. “They want to do a reboot, just like they rebooted Robocop and everything else. Chris Columbus goes ixnay, and it’s just not happening as long as he’s alive. There’s not going to be a reboot, there might be a Gremlins 3, and if there is a Gremlins 3, it’s got to happen in the next two or three years, or it simply won’t happen.”

“I know in 2018 for a fact that Chris Columbus wrote a script for a new Gremlins movies. Some of it leaked out and was very fairly controversial, because I guess one of the things that Chris Columbus started thinking as he got older and more mature, instead of just being a 22-year-old NYU student or whatever, or somewhere in New York where he went to school – he started thinking about things like the emotional ramifications of the fact that Gizmo can multiply and turn into horrible creatures that can destroy and murder people.”

“And so he started thinking about things like, ‘Shouldn’t we euthanize Gizmo since he’s a danger to the public.’ And I was like, ’Really? You’re going to go down that path for Gremlins 3. Killing Gizmo.’ But if he’s posing an ethical question or something like, I suppose it’s true. Sorry buddy, but you are potentially dangerous in the wrong hands,” Galligan continued.  

“I don’t know whether Warner Bros. just nixed the idea, but my feeling is that they did something else, which is what studios do a lot, which is that they took the temperature of the population by doing some marketing research and found that there wasn’t enough awareness because it had been a dormant franchise for three decades.”

Earlier this year Deadline reported that Chris Colombus was working with Warner Bros. to develop Gremlins 3. No word on how much of it will follow the leaked script or if we need to start worrying about Gizmo.

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