Director Joe Dante’s childhood creature feature classic Gremlins will be celebrating its 35th anniversary this year. And it turns out, to mark the occasion, the pint-sized horror-comedy will be returning to the big screen – but get this – it will also be getting the 4DX treatment at select Regal theaters!
The Gremlins 35th Anniversary re-release in 4DX begins on December 6th. You can go ahead and make sure the re-release is, in fact, playing at a theater near you right over here. And if it is, then you can just go ahead and snag your tickets there as well.
And if you can actually snag a ticket to this 4DX Gremlins re-release you’ve officially won and made this here Gizmo fan all kinds of jealous. As you might imagine, this means that I checked my local theater listing over at the official Regal website and – wa, wa – the event doesn’t look like it plans to play in my neck of the woods. I’m now taking sympathy cards if anyone wants to send one along. Cash and hard to find, original Gremlins merch are appreciated.
But all jokes aside, I might have to make a road trip for this event. After all, I’ve never seen a movie in this new-fangled 4DX presentation, so why not start with one of my favorite films? Well, I mean I haven’t experienced anything remotely like 4DX since the days of Captain EO, Honey, I Shrunk the Audience, R.L. Stine’s Haunted Lighthouse, and T2-3D: Battle Across Time. But hell, I enjoyed those experiences as a kid, so why not as an adult. I should take my kids. That’ll show them.
Gremlins was originally directed by Dante from a screenplay written by Chris Columbus. Steven Spielberg executive produced and Warner Bros. unleashed the critters back on June 8, 1984 – the same day Columbia released Ghostbusters. True story. The film spawned a seriously fun sequel called Gremlins 2: The New Batch, which hit back in 1990 and centered on the lovable green meanies taking up residence in a massive high-tech skyscraper smack dab in the middle of New York City. The film really is a national treasure and I highly suggest checking it out for the first time, or the 500th, as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, there has been talk of a third entry in the series, which all of us just refer to as, you know, Gremlins 3, for years now. Over and over for as long as I can remember, someone – usually franchise creator and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone director Chris Columbus – starts talking it up again once a year, promising pure gold… And then letting the third movie fade back into The Nothing from The Neverending Story. The last we heard about Gremlins 3 was back in April 2018 when – go figure – Columbus let us know the new film will almost definitely be a reboot.
But until we have further teases from Columbus regarding a Gremlins reboot or Gremlins 3 we can all look forward to that animated series Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai. The 10-episode half-hour series will be set in 1920s Shanghai and tell the tale of how 10-year-old future shop owner Mr. Wing met the young Mogwai called Gizmo. Meanwhile, this update comes to us from Regal.
