Gremlins Behind The Scenes

The inspiration for ‘Gremlins’ spawned from Steven Spielberg’s early drafts of ‘E.T.’ Originally, there were going to be lots of evil E.T.’s with only one of them being good. Yet, as he developed the story, he decided to ditch that idea and choose just a good E.T. ‘Gremlins’ was the revival of his original concept with Gizmo being the good terrestrial this time round.

Gremlins was released during the summer even though it takes place during the Christmas season and can be considered a "Christmas movie". When asked why he decided to open the film in June, the director, Joe Dante,
responded that if it opened in November, people would stop watching it after Christmas since it would be "a Christmas movie". Released during the summer it could be come a summer hit that people would want to see over and over again and as an added bonus the cold theater and snowy setting would make it a perfect choice for people wanting to escape the summer heat. The idea worked and Gremlins became a classic for any time of the year.

Written by Chris Columbus (Future director of "Home Alone" and the first two "Harry Potter" films) as a writing sample, the original version was much more violent and featured scenes such as the Gremlins decapitating Billy's mom and rolling her head down the stairs when Billy got home. They also ate the dog!

Another major difference is that the Mogwai Billy gets originally became evil and became Stripe, the script eventually ended up in the hands of Steven Spielberg who asked Columbus to tone it down, thus turning it into the movie we know today...

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Stripe burrows out of the snow and sings with the Carrolors