Gremlins 3 Delayed Until 2028 as Gizmo’s Big-Screen Return Moves Back Almost a Year
We’ve already waited more than three decades for another Gremlins movie, so what’s another eleven months?
Warner Bros. has delayed its long-awaited third Gremlins film, moving the sequel from its previously announced November 19, 2027 release date to October 6, 2028. The change means Gizmo’s return to cinemas will now come almost 38 years after Gremlins 2: The New Batch opened in 1990, extending one of the longest gaps between instalments in a major horror-comedy franchise. Warner Bros. confirmed the new date on September 23 with a very brief teaser showing Gizmo emerging from a backpack before the numbers 10.6.28 appear on screen.
There is currently no publicly confirmed reason for the delay, so suggestions that the production has encountered problems would be speculation. Warner Bros. shifted the film as part of a wider series of release-date changes that also saw DC Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures Animation’s Dynamic Duo move from June to September 2028. Deadline reports that the changes are unrelated to Warner Bros.’ pending corporate merger with Paramount, while noting that the studio has previously enjoyed major success with films opening during the first weekend of October.
The delay is disappointing after Gremlins 3 finally became official last November. For years, a third movie had occupied that strange Hollywood space where people involved kept talking about it, scripts were written and rumours periodically resurfaced, yet Gizmo stubbornly refused to make it back onto a cinema screen. That changed in November 2025 when Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav announced that a new Gremlins movie was officially heading towards cinemas in 2027.
There was another significant piece of news attached to that announcement. Chris Columbus, who wrote the original Gremlins, is returning to direct the new film as well as produce. Steven Spielberg, executive producer of the first two movies, is also returning as executive producer. The current screenplay is credited to Columbus alongside Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein, the filmmaking team behind Final Destination Bloodlines. Earlier drafts of the long-gestating project involved other writers, including Carl Ellsworth, but Warner Bros.’ announcement of the current incarnation identified Columbus, Lipovsky and Stein as its writing team.
It will be the first time Columbus has directed a Gremlins movie. Joe Dante directed both the 1984 original and its gloriously unhinged 1990 sequel, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, while Columbus’ screenplay provided the foundation for the first film. There has been no announcement that Dante will be involved with the third movie, meaning Columbus is moving from the writer who helped create the cinematic rules of the Mogwai to the filmmaker responsible for bringing them back to the big screen.
Three Rules, One Classic
The original Gremlins arrived in 1984 and introduced audiences to one of the most recognisable creatures of the decade. Zach Galligan plays Billy Peltzer, whose inventor father Randall, played by Hoyt Axton, purchases a mysterious Mogwai named Gizmo from a shop in Chinatown as a Christmas present. The adorable creature comes with three extremely important instructions: don’t expose him to bright light, don’t get him wet and never feed him after midnight.
Naturally, things go wrong.
Getting Gizmo wet causes him to reproduce, creating a group of considerably less pleasant Mogwai led by Stripe. Once those new creatures get their hands on food after midnight, they transform into the reptilian Gremlins and turn the small town of Kingston Falls into a Christmas nightmare. What follows is a peculiar mixture of creature feature, black comedy, festive movie and horror that can move from Gizmo being impossibly cute to a Gremlin being destroyed in a microwave without apparently seeing any contradiction between the two.
That tonal mixture became one of the film’s defining qualities. Gremlins could be funny, nasty and surprisingly dark, while the practical creature effects gave Gizmo and his considerably less well-behaved relatives personalities that have survived far beyond the movie itself. The original was also a substantial commercial success, becoming one of the major films of the summer of 1984 and ensuring that nobody has ever heard the phrase “after midnight” quite the same way since.
Six years later, Dante returned with Gremlins 2: The New Batch and essentially took the rulebook apart. Billy and Kate, played again by Galligan and Phoebe Cates, encounter Gizmo in New York’s enormous Clamp Center, where another accidental soaking eventually produces a fresh collection of Mogwai. This time the Gremlins gain access to a genetics laboratory, resulting in increasingly bizarre mutations including the Brain Gremlin, Bat Gremlin, Spider Gremlin and Vegetable Gremlin.
Where the first movie balanced its anarchic comedy against genuine horror, The New Batch pushed the absurdity much further. It spoofed television, corporate culture, movie sequels and even the original Gremlins, producing a film that was less commercially successful than its predecessor but subsequently developed a strong cult reputation.
And then the Gremlins disappeared from cinemas.
Gizmo Didn’t Completely Go Away
The wait between Gremlins 2 and the forthcoming film hasn’t been entirely empty. The property returned in animated form with Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai in 2023, an Amblin Television and Warner Bros. Animation prequel exploring the younger Sam Wing and his first encounter with Gizmo in 1920s China. Joe Dante served as a consulting producer, while Steven Spielberg was among its executive producers.
The series expanded the mythology surrounding the Mogwai considerably beyond what the two live-action films had explored. Sam, Gizmo and Elle journey through China while encountering creatures and spirits drawn from Chinese folklore, with the story also digging further into the origins of the Mogwai themselves. The second season, retitled Gremlins: The Wild Batch, began in October 2024 and moved the adventure towards San Francisco and the American West. Its remaining episodes arrived in April 2025.
Both seasons were particularly well received by the relatively small pool of critics represented on Rotten Tomatoes, where each currently holds a 100% Tomatometer score. More importantly for the franchise, the animated series demonstrated that there was still room to tell stories involving Gizmo decades after the live-action movies disappeared.
The new film, however, represents something different. This isn’t another animated side story or prequel. Warner Bros. is putting Gremlins back into cinemas, with two of the most important creative figures from the 1984 film involved.
Who Is Coming Back?
Beyond Columbus and Spielberg, many of the questions fans actually want answered remain unanswered. Warner Bros. has not announced the principal cast or revealed the plot, and the studio is currently referring to the project as an untitled Gremlins movie, despite Gremlins 3 naturally becoming the shorthand used for it.
That means there is currently no official confirmation that Zach Galligan will return as Billy Peltzer, Phoebe Cates will return as Kate or Howie Mandel will once again provide Gizmo’s voice. Galligan has spent years discussing his enthusiasm for returning to the franchise, but until Warner Bros. announces the cast of this particular production, their involvement shouldn’t be treated as confirmed.
There is also the rather important question of what the Gremlins themselves will look like. The elaborate puppetry and practical creature work of the original movies are a huge part of their appeal, particularly because the physical Gremlins were able to interact directly with actors, props and sets. No detailed announcement has yet established exactly how Columbus intends to realise Gizmo and the creatures in the new film, so claims about whether the production will favour puppetry, digital effects or a mixture of both would currently be premature.
Even the story is being kept locked away somewhere safer than Gizmo should have been on Christmas Eve. We don’t know whether the film will bring Billy back into the centre of the story, introduce a new generation of characters, connect directly with the animated series or simply unleash another batch of Gremlins somewhere entirely new.
For the moment, Warner Bros. seems content simply to remind everybody that Gizmo exists and give us a date.
Unfortunately, that date is now considerably further away.
Gremlins 3, or whatever its eventual official title proves to be, will now arrive in cinemas on October 6, 2028. By then it will have been approximately 44 years since Gremlins and 38 years since Gremlins 2: The New Batch.
After waiting that long, Warner Bros. probably has time to make absolutely certain nobody feeds the production after midnight.
