Steven Spielberg Saved Gizmo From Becoming a Villain in GREMLINS

Gizmo was such a great lovable character in director Joe Dante's Gremlins. Everyone loves that character, but the original plan was to turn him into a villain in the film! Luckily producer Steven Spielberg stepped in to save Gizmo from his villainous fate. 

During a recent Q&A with EW, Joe Dante talked about how the adorable Mogwai was originally supposed to turn into the leader of the gremlins. Here he explains how the change from villain to hero went down:

“We invented a way to get Gizmo to move, but the problem was that Gizmo was supposed to, in the original script, turn into Stripe, the bad Gremlin, after about 20 minutes, and that was they that we planned to do the movie…But Steven Spielberg got it into his head, after seeing all of our tests with Gizmo, that he liked Gizmo so much that he said, ‘You know, we really shouldn’t get rid of him, he should stick around and be the hero’s pal for the entire picture.’ Which was terrifying for us, because we were about four weeks away from shooting, and we had no idea how to make this puppet, which was really small, carry a movie, and be a character, basically.”

It's a good thing Spielberg had the sense to make this change. Without Gizmo, Gremlins would have been a very different kind of film! Dante talks more about the film in the video interview below.

In case you didn't know, Gremlins is being re-released in theaters during the holiday season. The event is called Gremlins: Breaking The Rules, and it will screen at various select theaters from December 8th through December 26th. You can find a full list of participating theaters at the Gremlins Rule Breakers website.