If your original script development goes on the fritz, or your franchise machine blows up, before you call the studio repairman, turn on all the lights. Check all the closets and cupboards. Look under all the beds. ‘Cause you never can tell. There just might be a Gremlins in your house you can reboot, provided Warner Bros.' talks with Steven Spielberg and Amblin Entertainment go more productively than they have the last several times it’s been attempted. It happens every so often, as we heard last year from Joe Dante—director of the 1984 original and its gloriously self-referential, seemingly franchise-imploding sequel—and he seemed as dour about its immediate prospects (and his involvement) as he was consigned to its inevitability, someday. Now Vulture seems to believe that day is closer than ever, suggesting “it might just actually come off this time” if a deal can be worked out with Spielberg to sign off on it as executive producer.
That’s all the information at hand, of course, but it hasn’t stopped the story from spreading all across the Internet, like a mischievous beast spawned unwillingly from the back of an innocent, squealing Mogwai. Now, in the midnight of uncertainty, we just have to wait and see whether Spielberg actually feeds it the, uh, fried chicken of his endorsement. Hey, how are you liking these Gremlins metaphors? They’d probably look better in CGI right?