HBO Max’s animated prequel series “Gremlins: Spirit of the Mogwai,” which world premiered on June 16 at France’s Annecy Animation Festival, begins with a hint of “The Sound of Music.” A young Gizmo…
on June 16 at France’s Annecy Animation Festival, begins with a hint of “The Sound of Music.”
It will also serve to enamour a new generation of audiences to Gizmo, a plucky orange bat-eared pelt-bodied Mogwai with a heart of gold – possibly the cutest furball in cinema history. “But Steven Spielberg decided in his wisdom that Gizmo should stick around and be the hero’s pal. If we had made the movie the other way, nobody would remember it. The addition of Gizmo made the difference. In his own way, he’s the star of the movie.”Gizmo is also one of the stars of “Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai.” The other, from a first episode viewed in Annecy, looks set to be the snub-nosed 10-year old Sam Wing, the future shop owner Mr. Wing in the 1984 movie.
One particular lure for Chun, the series writer and showrunner, was seeing the friendship between Sam and Gizmo develop over the course of the season, he said. “It was really important to us that they just don’t become friends right away because they come from two different worlds.” “One thing we always went back to throughout the whole production in every department from story boards to animation was to keep the feel of an Amblin movie,” said Hay. “So the scares have to actually be scary, the laughs have to really play as funny and you have to actually care about the characters.