COMING TO AMERICA

THE MOGWAI LIVE THE AMERICAN DREAM IN THEIR SECOND CHAPTER, GREMLINS: THE WILD BATCH

- TARA BENNETT

WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED in the year that Joe Dante's Gremlins turns 40 that audiences would be getting new stories that expand the Mogwai mythology? The next chapter of the animated prequel series, Gremlins: The Wild Batch, returns for the spooky season with major guest voices, a whole new continent to mess up and Easter eggs galore.

Creator Tze Chun and co-showrunner Brendan Hay tell SFX that after an initial season of establishing how young Sam Wing (Izaac Wang) met a young Gizmo the Mogwai, the series is broadening its ambition by adding more magic and shifting locales from Shanghai to San Francisco.

"We really wanted season two to be an East meets West of American mythology and Chinese mythology," Chun says. "One thing that Brendan and I always talked about in the writers' room was that we want this to be a very serialised show. Even though there's 'monsters of the week,' the characters progress and they get older. They learn things and their friendships change.

"It was really important to us to tell a very emotional story for each of our characters, but also go even deeper with the characters.

Season one [asked], how did Gizmo meet the old Mr Wing (Keye Luke) from the original movies? Season two is about, how did they make their first steps into America?"