‘Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai’: Joe Dante’s Take, Pitching Steven Spielberg, Gizmo Charisma, Getting China Right

variety.com:

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentHBO Max’s animated prequel series “Gremlins: Spirit of the Mogwai,” which world premiered on June 16 at France’s Annecy Animation Festival, begins with a hint of “The Sound of Music.”A young Gizmo stands in his bucolic grassy homeland, hidden down a huge hole in snowbound high Himalayas, chanting from a circular stone dias, replete with mysterious engravings.

As his fellow Mogwai chant back, positioned on grassy knolls around him, suddenly the hills are alive with the sound of Mogwai.Then a shadow falls out of the sky – a huge heinous eagle plummeting towards the Mogwai.

Most scarper. Plucky Gizmo, however, hurls rocks at the eagle and, flipped up onto its back, is transported out of his home, as the eagle whooshes up the hole in retreat.

Falling into a boat on a young Yangtze river, Gizmo is discovered by a travelling circus and taken to 1920s Shanghai.Joe Dante on a Game-Changing Steven Spielberg’s DecisionThe opening is a literal origins story, giving early part-explanation as to how Gizmo ends up in a Chinatown antique store at the beginning of 1984’s “Gremlins.”It will also serve to enamour a new generation of audiences to Gizmo, a plucky orange bat-eared pelt-bodied Mogwai with a heart of gold – possibly the cutest furball in cinema history.On Thursday, 38 years after he brought Gizmo to the world, “Gremlins” director Joe Dante received a hero’s welcome as he walked to the stage at Annecy’s Bonlieu Grand Salle for a post-screening Q&A on the HBO 10-part half hour series, produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin and Warner Bros.