WonderCon 2025: ‘Gremlins: The Wild Batch’ Interviews

Nostalgia for the 1980s is still going strong. Reboots, remakes, and sequels abound. So, it’s no surprise that Gremlins has been included in that. What you may find surprising, however, is that the movie – which was one of the ones that caused the creation of the PG-13 rating due to violence – has been turned into a children’s cartoon.

The first season, titled Secrets of the Mogwai, is a prequel series that takes place in the 1920s. The ten-episode season follows Sam Wing, who encounters the cuddly Gizmo, as he tries to bring the Mogwai back to where he belongs. Streaming on HBO, it has an all-star Asian cast including Ming-Na Wen, BD Wong, James Hong, and George Takei.

The second season (titled The Wild Batch to parallel the second movie’s title of The New Batch) was getting ready to premiere back in April 2025, and so some of the cast and crew were doing press at WonderCon. I managed to get into the press room.

I only got a few minutes, but they separated them into two groups. First, executive producer and showrunner Tze Chun and composer Sherri Chung were interviewed together; followed by executive producer Brendan Hay, actor John Glover (who played Daniel Clamp in Gremlins 2 and was a voice in the second season as well), and Joe Dante (I admit: I fangirled a little bit) who was the director on the original movie and is a consulting producer on the show.

I first asked Chun why they decided to make Gremlins (which is not exactly for kids) into a family-friendly cartoon.

“You know, one of the things that we wanted to do was just to first off, just to tell more stories in this Gremlins universe,” he started. “The very first directive that we talked about was making sure that this was something that really everybody in the family could watch together. Fans of the original Gremlins movies, you know, a lot of them grew up and came of age when that movie came out. So, me and Brendan were huge, huge fans of the original Gremlins movies, and now that we have our own kids, we wanted to have something where we could watch it with them and introduce Gizmo to a whole new generation.

“I think it was definitely an ongoing conversation about how much gore we could have in the show,” he continued. “I mean, there’s stuff in season one where multiple people’s fingers get bit off, and the question was always like, is it a ham or is it a hot dog? Is there a visible bone sticking out of it or not?”

I then talked to Chung, asking her how much she used the music from the original movies in the new series and how much was new.

“I mean, there’s certain elements that are obviously the same,” she said. “There’s just certain elements as a film composer: we’re storytelling; I’m building themes that connect with characters. Having those collaborative conversations is really important, but I think where animation gets really, in my opinion, a lot harder: there’s a lot more heavy lifting of the music. The music has a lot more accountability. The storytelling is a little bit more dominant of a role than it is, let’s say, in certain live actions that I’ve done.

“It was such a great thing to be on this project and to be challenged in that way,” she continued. “Honestly, of the number of projects that I’ve done, [this] is probably where I’ve grown the most as a composer. I think one of the reasons is because we’re working with live musicians, live orchestra, and you get found out pretty quickly if your music has holes in it, if there’s something that’s not playable or something that just doesn’t really vibe right. The stories of this are so rich and there’s so much layering in there that it’s a playground for sure.”

Chun continued, “We were very lucky in that we got to have an orchestra and play live. I think for me and Brendan, coming in and watching Sherri work and seeing the show projected on screen as they were recording, that was really when this felt real to me. Like, ‘Oh, my God! We made it. We’re making a TV show,’ and we’re still making a TV show after two years of being in our own homes, working from home during a pandemic, and just being like, ‘Huh, I guess we’re doing this.’”

“That’s rare,” Chung added. “It’s rare in Hollywood now that we get live orchestras, certainly as large as we did. So, all thanks to Tze, to Brendan. I don’t know who paid for it. Whoever it is, we thank them: because I think it really, really adds [to it]. And this story and this franchise really deserve that. It’s Amblin; it’s Jerry Goldsmith and Joe Dante. I mean, these were not fully synthesized scores.”

While Asian representation in Hollywood is somewhat getting better, it obviously still has a way to go. I asked Chun about his thoughts on that with regard to this project.

“I was so excited when presented with the opportunity to do a Gremlins animated prequel set in 1920s China,” he responded, “because it really allowed me to draw on some of the stories that I grew up hearing about in terms of spirits and creatures, things that were scary. Also, kind of like the Mogwai, you know, Chinese spirits and creatures always have their own rules and ways they operate, their own personality.

“From an industry standpoint,” Chun continued, “being able to cast a show with a primarily Chinese American, Asian American cast, having a lot of folks on the crew who are Asian American with that type of talent: I think the talent development in Hollywood has not really been there a lot of the time for Asian voices. For this show, we gave a lot of people their first chance: we bumped them up, so that we gave them more responsibility, because we knew that they could handle it. And that, for me, was very satisfying to be able to be like, ‘All right. Well, you know, maybe the talent development these people have not necessarily been given a chance, but let’s take a chance on folks and give them a bump up and to do their best work.’”

Then, it was time for round two. While we are in the middle of a reboot/remake/sequel surge, I asked what makes the Gremlins endure over the years?

“I think it taps into two things that are universal,” Brendan Hay said. “One: a kid and their pet. Gizmo is the greatest pet ever, so everybody wants to be with a pet that’s that amazing and fun and adorable. And then I think the other thing is we all want to occasionally cut loose and act like the Gremlins. So you get both: you get the cute and you get the crazy.”

I then asked Hay the same question I did Chun: what was the thinking behind making a children’s show for one of the movies that helped cause the PG-13 rating. (I was there, Gandalf.) “I think probably because I saw it in the theater at like six or seven years old and loved it. And if I can’t scar the next generation, why am I even in entertainment?”

I had one shot at the legendary Joe Dante, so I asked if he was oddly proud of the ratings outcome. (I know I would be.) “I am, because in Gremlins 2, there’s a scene where a mother is watching the Gremlins movie, and she’s upset and doesn’t want her kid to see it, and she grabs her and picks her out in the lobby and complains. And that was based on something that really happened when I was at a screening at Warner Bros. There’s a woman who was dragging her child out, and the kid was, ‘I don’t wanna go!’, and she was like, ‘You’re not going to see this trash.’ And the kid got away from her and ran down into the theater and hid, and the mother stood in the back next to me, fuming and had to stay the whole rest of the movie.

“And I just remember thinking this woman doesn’t even understand her own child, you know?” he continued. “Kids can take it. Kids like that kind of stuff. I mean, Walt Disney wouldn’t have built an empire if he didn’t have scary stuff in his movies, and I think kids are a lot more resilient than people think they are. And that’s why this whole PG 13 brouhaha, which is not just Gremlins, it was the ripped-out heart {note: referring to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom}, it was all kind of overblown. And then they went back and never rerated Gremlins. It’s still rated PG.”

I then asked him about his thoughts on B movies in today’s age of instant streaming.

“B movies: well, that’s an interesting question,” Dante said thoughtfully, “because the definition of B movies varies with people, you know. B movie used to be the second feature, and now it’s a movie that’s made for not very much money or it’s an exploitation movie or something like that. Do we need more exploitation movies? No, there’s plenty of exploitation movies. We got plenty of those.

“Do we need more independent movies that are good?” he asked. “There are a lot of independent movies: some of them are good, some of them are bad. But I’m a fan of having just more movies. I think the more movies, the better. And I think the more movies seen in a theater with an audience, which is the way they’re supposed to be seen—certainly comedies and horror pictures work much better with the audience—is one of the reasons that people of my generation grew up loving movies. It was a place that we… you meet people at the theater, it was a communal experience. But now everybody gets their experience on TV or on their phone, and it’s just not the same.”

I only got one question with Glover, which was unfortunate as I had a lot of material to go on (his Wikipedia page is amazing). He’s done it all: television, movies, theatre. So, I asked him if he had a favorite, or if that was like choosing a favorite child.

“Well, live theatre is great,” he said. “I love it all. I love to be somebody else. I’m most happy when I’m being somebody, because I have [figured out who I am].” I’m hoping to set up a separate interview with him for my podcast sometime.

I asked Hay if he could give us anything about what happens in Gremlins: The Wild Batch.

“We are leaving San Francisco, so we get to explore the American West,” he said. “We get to do tall tales, we get to do western towns, we get to do a haunted house episode. It’s just getting to play with another mythological culture on top of more and more and more Mogwai madness as we pile them on top of each other.”

Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai and the second season, titled The Wild Batch, are both streaming on HBO, and I recommend it. Both seasons have a high rating on Rotten Tomatoes and have been nominated for awards. There’s currently no news as to whether there will be a third season, but Wikipedia indicates that there will be a Gremlins 3 movie in 2027.

See all my WonderCon 2025 coverage here and see all my photos from the con on my Flickr.

Author: Angie Fiedler Sutton

Angie Fiedler Sutton is a writer, podcaster, and all-round fangirl geek. She has been published in Den of Geek, Stage Directions, LA Weekly, The Mary Sue, and others. She also produces her own podcast, Contents May Vary, where she interviews geeky people about geeky things. You can see all her work (and social media channels) at angiefsutton.com.

Help support independent journalism. Subscribe to our Patreon.

Copyright © The Geekiary