Earlier this year, Warner Bros. announced that a new Gremlins movie was in the works, and it seems like it might move forward sooner than we thought. According to one of the original stars, Zach Galligan, the film has a finished script and they’re just waiting for Steven Spielberg’s approval.
“After 35 years, they’ve come up with a script. Warner Bros. is incredibly interested in doing it, apparently it’s waiting on Mr. Spielberg to read it and approve it,” he told the audience at Comic Con Manchester last week (via Tik Tok).
Galligan said that fans can thank this development to the box office success of last year’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. The legacy sequel starring Jenna Ortega saw Michael Keaton returning as Beetlejuice almost forty years after Tim Burton’s original film. With another IP turning into a great success, A Minecraft Movie, Warner Bros is looking to develop more movies around other iconic properties, including Gremlins 3, and a sequel to The Goonies.
“We’re super excited about Amblin developing with Chris Columbus new entries in the Gremlins and Goonies franchises”, Warner Bros Pictures co-chairman/CEOs Pam Abdy told Deadline last April.
Gremlins 3 has been in the works quite a long time, with Galligan and Harry Potter director Chris Columbus being the most vocal figures in the project. The new movie is meant to be a sequel, not a reboot, with Columbus saying in 2017 that he had been “aggressively working” on a “twisted and dark script” with writer Carl Ellsworth. In 2020, Columbus said that they would not be using CGI for the gremlins but rather traditional puppets and animatronics.
According to the latest update, Spielberg has to give the final approval to the script. If he does and everything moves swiftly, filming could start as soon as next year, and we could be looking at a 2027 release date for the threequel.
Gremlins and Gremlins: The New Batch are streaming now on Amazon Prime. For more, check out our list of the most exciting upcoming movies in 2025 and beyond.