The last Gremlins film, the sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch, hit theaters more than 30 years ago, but the franchise is set to make a return in a big way with the upcoming animated series Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai. While the new series is set to make its premiere in June at the Annecy Animation Festival, it doesn’t yet have an official release date on HBO Max, though we can likely expect it to land on the streamer shortly after its official premiere. As fans wait for more information about the new series, Variety has offered new details on the series’ synopsis, while also confirming the series’ voice cast. Learn more about the prequel series below and stay tuned for updates on Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai.
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The outlet details of the series, “A period piece set in 1920s Shanghai, it reveals how a 10-year-old Sam Wing – who becomes the future shop owner Mr. Wing in the 1984 movie – met the young Mogwai called Gizmo. They strike up a lifelong friendship as Wing attempts to return Gizmo to his family, encountering and sometimes battling colorful monsters and spirits from Chinese folklore. Meanwhile, the two and street thief Elle are pursued by a power-hungry industrialist and his growing army of evil Gremlins.”
The announced voice cast is as follows:
- Ming Na-Wen as Fong Wing
- BD Wong as Hon Wing
- James Hong as Grandpa Wing
- Izaac Wang as Sam Wing
- A.J. LoCascio as Gizmo
- Gabrielle Green as Elle
- Matthew Rhys as Riley Greene
While there are currently no official plans for a third live-action Gremlins film, star Zach Galligan reunited with Gizmo for a Mountain Dew commercial last year, with the actor revealing that he’s more interested in returning to the franchise than ever.
“So now, fast forward to this commercial, and it’s 30 — you’re talking three decades later and it’s a completely different technological world,” Galligan noted to ComicBook.com of special effects advancements. “And you have the dialogue pre-synced with the mouth movements, with the animatronics having 37 different cables for parts of his face. This thing and that thing, if someone sees the cable, it doesn’t matter. There’s this new thing called ‘CGI’ where you can just erase the cable. It’s just exponentially easier to do stuff with this technology. It just makes me feel like, if it’s Gremlins 3 and there were a whole bunch of sequences with me and Gizmo, whereas the first one took us two months to shoot, I think this time it would take us about 10 days. It just would be so much faster.”
Stay tuned for details on Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai.
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