Rejected 'Gremlins 3' Pitch Answers One Of The Biggest Questions About Mogwai Rules

Whether you like it or not, Warner Bros. is still developing a new Gremlins movie. Once rumored to be a remake of the original 1984 horror comedy, recent details have pegged the film as more of a reboot/sequel in the same vein as Jurassic World. While we don't know any specifics of the story, it has been said that the movie will keep the original film's mythology intact while retelling the same story 30 years later.

Carl Ellsworth (Goosebumps) was the last writer reported to be hired on the Gremlins reboot back in April of last year, but some details on one of the rejected ideas for the project have just come to light thanks to Freddy vs. Jason writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift posting a couple of pages from their pitch. Even though this story won't make it to the big screen, it's cool to see how this rejected Gremlins 3 pitch answers a big question about one of the three Mogwai rules.

If you've seen Gremlins, then you know the little furry creatures known as Mogwai must be cared for with consideration for these three rules:

However, fans have always wondered how the concept of feeding Mogwai after midnight works when dealing with changing time zones. For example, if a Mogwai is on a plane, crossing time zones, does it have to be after midnight in that time zone or is there a specific time zone that applies to the Mogwai? An answer is found in the aforementioned two pages from the rejected reboot pitch that were just posted to Twitter by Shannon and Swift (via MovieWeb).

Following a gunfight in Tibet after the theft of a familiar wooden box, a tattooed man makes it onto a plane after bribing customs officials to let him on with his acquisition. Inside the box is the familiar furry friend Gizmo and another Mogwai which starts making noise because it's hungry. The man considers feeding the hungry Mogwai part of his Power Bar, but thinks better of the situation after asking the stewardess is unable to determine whether it's truly after midnight due to flying over timezones.

So it would seem that the rules of the Mogwai adhere to the manmade creation of time zones, which doesn't exactly make sense. I've always thought a universal midnight would work better for the rules, but that's not how it works in the original film, so this explanation serves the mythology better.

What follows after this is an opening sequence reminiscent of the iconic Twilight Zone episode "Terror at 20,000 Feet" which was remade for Twilight Zone: The Movie by director George Miller. When a kid opens a bag of peanuts that spills all over the plane's cabin, the hungry Mogwai gets his hand on a single peanut, prompting that signature "Uh-oh" from Gizmo. The fed Mogwai escapes after turning into his slimy monster form and causes the plane to have a crash landing in a suburb.

It's there that a young boy stumbles upon the box with Gizmo still inside and keeps the pet for himself. The other two Mogwai rules are never mentioned or discussed, though surely their consequences are discovered, presumably unleashing the little monsters on yet another unsuspecting town.

If you want to read the full two pages from this rejects pitch, check out the full Twitter post right here. As for the story that will end up on the big screen, Chris Columbus has said that getting the new Gremlins movie off the ground is a slow process, so we have no timeframe as to when it might come together.