Gremlins 3 Gives Us Gizmo, Then Makes Us Wait Until 2028

We finally got to see something from the new Gremlins movie.

Unfortunately, the Mogwai brought bad news.

Warner Bros. has moved the still-untitled third Gremlins film from its previously announced November 19, 2027 release date to October 6, 2028, pushing the return of the franchise back almost another full year. The studio paired the new date with a very short first look featuring a familiar furry face peeking out from a bag. Yes, Gizmo appears to be back.

And look: after waiting since 1990 for another theatrical Gremlins, eleven more months shouldn't feel especially cruel.

It does, though.

The good news is that this remains a very real movie rather than one of those legacy-sequel projects that lives entirely in interviews for fifteen years while various filmmakers say they're “still talking about it.”

Chris Columbus, who wrote Joe Dante's original 1984 film, is set to direct and produce this one, while Steven Spielberg returns as an executive producer. Plot details and casting are still being kept quiet.

The date change is interesting mostly because Warner Bros. hasn't publicly attached an explanation to it. That means we're not going to invent one.

No, a delay does not automatically mean the movie is secretly collapsing, the Mogwai have unionized or somebody fed the production after midnight.

What we can say is that October 6 plants Gremlins considerably closer to Halloween than its old November date. For a franchise that has always lived in the wonderfully confused territory between family movie, creature feature, comedy and actual horror, early October isn't exactly hostile real estate.

In fact, it might be perfect.

The bigger question is what a Gremlins movie even looks like in 2028.

The original worked because it was willing to become meaner and stranger than its cuddly marketing suggested. Gizmo is adorable. The movie around him contains murder, kitchen carnage, creatures smoking and drinking in a bar and one of the darkest Christmas monologues ever smuggled into something sold partly to children.

Then Gremlins 2: The New Batch arrived in 1990 and essentially let Joe Dante turn the franchise into a live-action cartoon about its own existence.

That leaves the third movie with a surprisingly tricky job. Nostalgia alone isn't enough. You can put Gizmo in a backpack, play the music and trigger approximately three generations of dormant merchandising impulses, but Gremlins has always been best when something dangerous is happening underneath the cute stuff.

The tiny piece of footage Warner Bros. released doesn't tell us whether the new movie understands that. It's barely enough material to tell us anything beyond: yes, that certainly looks like Gizmo.

But after years of Gremlins 3 occupying the same imaginary shelf as several other “maybe someday” sequels, actually seeing the character attached to an official theatrical date matters.

Even if that date just moved farther away.

The other reassuring element is Columbus himself. His involvement doesn't guarantee that the new movie will recreate the peculiar energy Joe Dante brought to the originals — nor should it try to imitate them frame for frame — but it does give the project a direct creative connection to the movie that established the rules in the first place.

And those rules still matter.

Keep them away from bright light.

Don't get them wet.

Never feed them after midnight.

And apparently, under no circumstances should you expect the next movie before October 2028.