In the animated television adaptation, we travel back to 1920s Shanghai to reveal the story of how 10-year-old Sam Wing (future shop owner Mr. Wing in the 1984 movie) met the young Mogwai called Gizmo. Along with a teenage street thief named Elle, Sam and Gizmo take a perilous journey through the Chinese countryside, encountering, and sometimes battling, colorful monsters and spirits from Chinese folklore. On their quest to return Gizmo to his family and uncover a legendary treasure, they are pursued by a power-hungry industrialist and his growing army of evil Gremlins.
Various forms of a Gremlins continuation have been in the works for years now, but now we finally have official confirmation on when the next installment of the franchise will arrive.
In was announced last year that a new Gremlins animated TV series called Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai would be coming to the upcoming streaming service HBO Max at some point in the future — we just didn’t know when. But in a recent interview with Collider, one of the series’ executive producers, Brendan Hay, revealed that the show is scheduled to debut sometime in 2021. “Getting to do a horror and horror-comedy aimed at slightly older kids is a very different beast, but still been a lot of fun and yeah, so that’ll come out sometime in 2021,” Hay said of the series.
The new series is a prequel that will show how Gizmo’s owner, Mr. Wing, first came into possession of the mysterious Mogwai. Here’s the full synopsis:
After a number of failed attempts at making a third film, it’s great to see the Gremlins series finally continuing after so many years. It really is too great of a property to be allowed to just fade away, and we’re hoping that if Secrets of the Mogwai is a hit that even more Gremlins projects could follow.
