When you’ve been working in the industry as long as filmmaker Chris Columbus, you’re bound to have racked up a few bonafide classics, and that’s certainly true with The Goonies and Gremlins, two movies Columbus wrote for Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment back in the ’80s. As a director, Columbus went on to direct beloved films like Adventures in Babysitting and Mrs. Doubtfire… as well as the first two movies starring one Harry Potter.
Over the years, there’s been lots of talk about doing remakes and/or sequels to some of Columbus’ earlier work, the most recent one being a rumor that there were plans of doing a 3D remake of Gremlins. When ComingSoon.net spoke to Columbus at the junket for his new movie Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief, he admitted that so far, neither he nor the original film’s producer Steven Spielberg had been contacted about it.
“I spoke to Steven Spielberg a couple days ago and said, ‘You know, I’ve been reading on the internet about this ‘Gremlins 3D’ and no one’s approached him either, so I don’t know if that’s really true,” Columbus told us.
That doesn’t mean he’s completely ruling out doing some sort of sequel or update. “It would be fun to go back and revisit (them). Something like ‘Gremlins,’ which is a movie I really like, I think it’s impossible to recreate in a CGI environment. I think it will inevitably lose some of its charm. Those are edgy Muppets in a sense and you don’t want to lose that sense of anarchy that those gremlins had, because behind the scenes are 25 puppeteers making them to come to life.”
“‘Goonies’ would have to be the Goonies on their own as parents and their children doing something,” he continued. “But as Steven said, ‘How can you really be going underground finding another gigantic pirate ship filled with treasure? What can be the next adventure?'”
What about a sequel to Mrs. Doubtfire, his hit cross-dressing comedy starring Robin Williams? “‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ is an interesting idea for a sequel because it’s the one time in film history where you can revisit the character and they’ll be the same age 15 years later. Because of the make-up, people can see Mrs. Doubtfire again and nothing has changed about her, which I think is kind of interesting.”
Columbus also mentioned he’s still in touch with Spielberg regularly and the two of them have been talking about producing a movie together, although it’s not likely to be a sequel to one of the movies above.
We’ll have our full interview with Columbus next week before Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief opens on February 12.
