It’s safe to say most children of the ’80s have a lot of love for Joe Dante’s “Gremlins.” It’s probably the best work the director’s ever done, aside from his effectively unsettling segment of 1983’s “Twilight Zone: The Movie.” With the 3D craze hot on the heels of the ’80s remake epidemic, could we see Dante take on the third film in the Gremlins franchise (and in 3D, no less)? We reported on the rumor earlier (spun by the always unreliable MarketSaw), but Empire, who caught up the director at the Cine-Excess IV, a global film conference that would honor him this year, has the answer straight from the horse’s mouth: No. “It’s been heavily booted around on the internet that there is a ‘Gremlins 3’ and then somebody said Gremlins 3? Gremlins 3-D! I bet it’s a sequel in 3-D and I bet they’re gonna ask Joe to do it! Well the answer is no, no and no,” Dante said.
He had the following to say on the subject of a new Gremlins film: “I’m sure it’ll happen. It’s too valuable a title to not get the remake treatment. I think it will be a remake rather than a sequel. I think they’ll start over and do a remake or a sequel.” Wise words, Mr. Dante. It’s a shame too, since Dante could use the exposure, his last feature film being 2003’s hokey and forgettable “Looney Tunes: Back In Action,” which only grossed $20 mil stateside, but with foreign grosses helped bring it to $60 mil, $20 mil short of its budget.
The hype of a possible Gremlins reboot has all but overshadowed Dante’s upcoming horror film, “The Hole 3D.” Dante does a good job summarizing the flick, which sounds like a decent throwback to his old school grossout thrills. “It’s about a bunch of kids who go down to the basement of a new house and find a door with locks on it among the junk in the basement. Like any respectable movie kids, their mission is to get this door open and see what’s in there. They manage to get the door open and there’s a hole that leads to God knows what. Something comes out of the hole. Of course I couldn’t tell you what…”
The film is set to hit theaters in the U.K. on September 24th, but there’s no word yet of a U.S. release date. You can check out the trailer below.
–Written by Mark Zhuravsky