The summer 1984 film season was built around three guaranteed successes. Steven Spielberg’s “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” held pole position as a Memorial Day release and was expected to dominate through Labor Day. “Ghostbusters,” with its irresistible trio of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, seemed poised to become a horror-comedy hybrid. And “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock” seemed like a brand expansion opportunity for Gene Roddenberry’s franchise.
No one knew what to make of “Gremlins.” I don’t recall seeing a single trailer for the film before its release, nor do I think much was revealed in the pages of genre magazines Starlog and Fangoria. All I had to go on was the John Alvin poster, which depicted two hairy hands sticking out of a cracked shoebox. The slogan read “Cute. Smart. Mischievous. Clever. Dangerous.” But Steven Spielberg’s name on a sheet of paper, two years after he produced the gleefully terrifying “Poltergeist,” made it a must-see for movie-loving kids across the country.
I ended up liking “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and “Ghostbusters,” but “Gremlins” was the movie I kept coming back to watch. Joe Dante’s Looney Tunes-infused horror game was bloody, goofy, and gloriously anarchic. I got carried away by its irreverent energy and read everything I could about the making of this brilliantly crazy film. “Gremlins” stunned Hollywood by becoming the fourth highest-grossing film of the year, but I never found myself clamoring for a sequel, which was fortunate because Dante didn’t want to make one. WB, however, desperately wanted a second go-round with Gizmo and the gang, and when Dante continued to turn them down, they gave him full creative control. This caught Dante’s attention.
Early development of Gremlins 2 bore no fruit
In Consequence’s 2020 oral history about the making of “Gremlins 2: The New Batch,” Dante and producer Mike Finnell acknowledged that they tried to make WB happy by coming up with a worthy sequel idea. According to Finnell, “Almost immediately after the first one, Warner Brothers wanted to do a sequel. And Joe and I worked with a series of writers trying to come up with something, and nothing worked. And that went on for a while, and we finally kind of gave up. Nothing was working.”
Dante found a “Gremlins” sequel unappealing because he found the production of the first film “heartbreaking.” As the director explained to Consequence: “We had to make up the technology as we went along, we didn’t get a lot of studio support and it wasn’t a very big budget. And it was exhausting, frankly. So, as happy as I was when it was a success, I really couldn’t shake the idea of spending another six months or a year with puppets. I just didn’t have it in me. So I said, ‘Thanks but no thank you. ” “
WB was not deterred. They threw money at a variety of writers in the hopes that something would stick. This has never been the case. That’s when WB made Dante an offer no filmmaker could refuse.
Dante managed the store on Gremlins 2: The New Batch
Finnell told Consequence that development of a “Gremlins” sequel had been dead for two years when Dante left their WB office to contact the commissioner and met with studio head Terry Semel. According to Finnell, “Terry said, ‘Look, we need ‘Gremlins 2.’ We must have “Gremlins 2.” You can do whatever you want.
“It’s not an offer you get very often,” Dante said. “I certainly haven’t had it before or since. And enough time has passed that the technology has improved. So the possibilities have expanded from what was possible with the first film – and so Mike Finnell and I agreed to go ahead and develop a sequel.”
Carte blanche for Dante meant hiring Hollywood’s greatest creature designer, Rick Baker, to set about creating new Gremlins. If you’ve seen “Gremlins 2: The New Batch,” you know that Baker came out with a vengeance. Although the film was a box office disappointment (WB made a mistake opening it against “Dick Tracy” in the summer of 1990), it became a cult favorite and is considered by many fans to be superior to the first film. I think they are such different films that it’s impossible to pick a favorite. I’m so happy that the chaotic “Gremlins 2: The New Batch” exists, and I’m dreading the upcoming Dante-less “Gremlins 3” from Chris Columbus and Steven Spielberg. Yes, Columbus wrote the screenplay for the first film, but everything we love about this film comes from Dante’s inventive and tireless mind. It’s like hiring Sean Levy to do “The Godfather: Part IV.”
