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Director Joe Dante‘s children’s horror tale, The Hole – which stars Chris Massoglia, Haley Bennett, Nathan Gamble, Bruce Dern and Teri Polo – opens in theaters September 28 before arriving on Blu-ray and VOD October 2 from Big Air Studios. Mr. Disgusting thoroughly enjoyed the film and I thought it was a lot of fun myself. I didn’t get a chance to see it in 3D unfortunately (no 3D screeners yet), but that’s something I’m hoping to fix next week.
I recently hopped on the phone with Dante and we talked at length about The Hole, his cool web project “Trailers From Hell” and some of his upcoming features. I’ll be sharing the entirety of the interview next week but I figured I’d whet your appetite with some Gremlins talk. There’s been a lot of speculation about the future of the franchise so I figured I’d check in to see if he could clear up any misconceptions. Specifically, we discuss whether or not he’d be willing to return to the franchise – and where he thinks it will go next. In short – something will obviously happen at some point, just don’t expect it to be too soon.
There’s also a tiny bit of Gremlins 2 talk. I’m a huge fan of the series and I think that film is an amazing feat in how much it breaks away from the norm of studio sequels. Head inside for the exchange.
One of the things I’ve heard – and maybe you can clear this up – is that you might willing to do Gremlins 3 but with traditional puppetry. And the studio might be leaning towards CG. Is that really where the dividing line on that project comes down?
No, I don’t think there is a dividing line. I haven’t had any formal talks, or even informal talks, with them about it. It’s a title in their library that sooner or later will be re-exploited. You can’t obviously do a sequel to the second picture because the cast is too old and I don’t know that that’s the way they’re thinking. I think they’d probably reboot the whole thing and start all over or go in a different direction – take the Gremlins someplace else.
I do know that there have been attempts at Gremlins pictures. I know that people have gone in with pitches, but nothing has caught their eye. But I’m not positive that it’s entirely Warner Brothers’ decision. Because it’s an Amblin project, it probably has to be signed off on by Spielberg.
I think sooner or later there will be something, I just don’t know what it is yet.
At this point in your life is it something you you would want to revisit?
Well I was a little leery of revisiting it right after the first picture. So I didn’t. But no one else could figure out what to do with it for a couple of years and so it came back to me. I would certainly entertain the idea [of doing a 3rd film], Gremlins has been very good to me!
Gremlins 2 is such a unique sequel. Studios are so proprietary with their brands that I can’t imagine that happening today.
That was only because they promised me that, as a condition of doing the movie, I could do whatever I wanted. They couldn’t back down from that if they wanted to. They were very uncomfortable making fun of the product placement and things like that but ultimately they kept their word and let me do it that way.
