First Look At HBO Max's Animated Series 'Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai' Revealed

HBO Max has released a compilation video showing off their 2022 slate, giving fans their first look at Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai. This animated series will release next year and is set in the world of the 1984 holiday classic Gremlins. The film, from director Joe Dante and screenwriter Chris Columbus, followed Zach Galligan as Billy Peltzer receiving an adorable creature known as Gizmo the Mogwai for Christmas. But Billy needs to follow strict instructions for the creature's care. When Billy does not follow them, it unleashes a horde of evil, mayhem-causing Gremlins upon his small town. The film was followed by the 1990 sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch.

The upcoming series is a prequel that is set in 1920s Shanghai and focuses on the origin story of Gremlins character Mr. Wing (Keye Luke) who first brought Gizmo to the United States. It will also be interesting to see an animated version of the adored Mogwai and how the creators can add a modern spin to the show.  "It's a prequel. It goes back to the character Mr. Wing when he was a boy, and when he first discovered the Mogwai," executive producer Joe Dante told Daily Dead in 2020. "It's set in China in the '20s, and it's animated and it's very big in the sense that if you tried to shoot it as a theatrical film, it would be outrageously expensive. But in animation, you kind of get away with almost anything you can think of. And it's probably not going to be done until 2021 or maybe the end of 2020."

He also elaborated on how the makers moved the franchise to animation. "I think this is a really clever way to get back into that," Dante said. "I think that they found it pretty difficult to make a sequel to Gremlins 2, because of just the way I made it. And they just could never really quite figure out how to do it. So I think this is a great way to sort of get the franchise back on people's minds...It's like when you make Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and you can't make any more Frankenstein movies."

According to Screen Rant, the voice actors of the series includes Izaac Wang, B. D. Wong, James Hong, Matthew Rhys, A. J. Locascio, Gabrielle Nevaeh Green, and The Book of Boba Fett's Ming-Na Wen. More recently, executive producer Brendan Hay shared the HBO Max teaser on Twitter, joking that it's a perfect release date since Gremlins is a Christmas movie. There's a lot coming to HBO Max so the introduction of the first at Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai is so brief that if you blink you might just miss it. Take a look below!