Posted in: HBO, Preview, streaming, TV | Tagged: cable, Gremlins, gremlins secrets of the mogwai, HBO, hbo max, joe dante, streaming, television, tv, warnermedia

"Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai": Original Film Director Joe Dante Consulting – "I'm Very Pleased with the Way It's Going"

While we still have awhile to go before HBO Max's upcoming animated prequel series Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai begins getting fed after midnight and is allowed to get wet (leading to all sorts of insanity), we're learning that a legendary name in film is serving as a consultant on the series.

And it's someone who we're pretty sure is aware of the rules…

In an interview with Daily Dead, original Gremlins director Joe Dante revealed that he is serving as a consultant on the streaming service's animated series – and he likes what he's seen so far: "It's good. It's going to be good, yeah. I'm very pleased with the way it's going."

Seeing it as a "great way to sort of get the franchise back on people's minds", Dante's a fan of giving some backstory to the original film – and the creative freedom that animation offers:

"It's a prequel. It goes back to the character Mr. Wing when he was a boy, and when he first discovered the Mogwai. It's set in China in the '20s, and it's animated and it's very big in the sense that if you tried to shoot it as a theatrical film, it would be outrageously expensive. But in animation, you kind of get away with almost anything you can think of. And it's probably not going to be done until 2021 or maybe the end of 2020. It's for HBO Max, a new streaming variant of HBO."

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.

Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai is produced by Amblin Television in association with Warner Bros. Animation. The series is written by Tze Chun and executive produced by Darryl Frank (The Americans, Animaniacs, Amazing Stories!), Justin Falvey (The Americans, Animaniacs, Amazing Stories!), and Sam Register (Teen Titans Go! upcoming Animaniacs) with Chun and Brendan Hay (Dawn of the Croods, Robot Chicken, Harvey Girls Forever) serving as co-executive producer. Dan Krall (Coraline, Scooby-Doo!) will serve as supervising producer.

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