This Overlooked Prequel Is The Perfect Stand-In For Gremlins 3

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Warner Bros. announced in November 2025 that they are making a third movie. Chris Columbus, the writer of the original 1984 film, is directing the new adventure starring the playful green creatures, and it’s scheduled to hit theaters on November 19, 2027.

Details about the plot are currently being kept secret, but some fans are hoping the writers drew inspiration from a fan-made comic book called Gremmens. If they did, this could be the most frightening chapter yet in this popular horror-comedy series.

Gremmens Is A WWII Nightmare From The World Of Gremlins

In the movie Gremlins, Murray Futterman, played by Dick Miller, shares a seemingly rambling story with Billy and Kate about encountering these mischievous creatures during World War II. At first, it sounds like the ramblings of an intoxicated man, especially after the gremlins damage his snowplow and wreck his house. But what if his story was actually true all along?

The comic book series Gremmens, released in 2023 by What If? Comics, focuses on stories that are essentially fan fiction, drawing inspiration from classic and ’70s-era films. A good example is Die Hard of the Dead, which reimagines the character who inspired Bruce Willis’s John McClane as a survivor in a zombie apocalypse.

In the comic Gremmens, writer Matt Stapleton and artist Mark Hooley reimagine Murray Futterman as a young soldier fighting in World War II. There, he and his unit encounter a strange and dangerous enemy—a group they call ‘the little bastards.’ Their battle against this bizarre foe continues in the 2025 release of Gremmens 2, with the team working together to overcome a threat unlike any they’ve faced before.

Gremmens Kicks The Horror Of The Gremlins Up A Notch

The danger posed by the Gremlins in the comic Gremmens is genuinely frightening. The original Gremlins and its sequel, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, are very funny, but this prequel comic is much more intense and focuses on the darker side of these creatures.

Mark Hooley’s artwork fully embraces the horror that the original Gremlins movie only suggested, portraying the creatures as the truly terrifying monsters some moviegoers likely imagined. His work, Gremmens, feels like a gritty war story, but with a twist: the German army isn’t the biggest danger around.

Now that the original fans of Gremlins are adults who appreciate more serious and intense stories, it might be time for Gremlins 3 to really ramp up the scares. And if they’re going to do that, the book Gremmens seems like the perfect material to draw from.

Gremmens Connects The Film Franchise To Gremlins’ True Origin

Many fans of the movie Gremlins know there’s a prequel series called Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai. While the series on HBO Max explores the origins of the creatures, this new prequel has the benefit of being more closely based on the actual folklore that inspired them.

The idea of gremlins isn’t new – it actually comes from a legend dating back to World War II. Royal Air Force mechanics used to jokingly blame gremlins for unexplained problems with their fighter planes, imagining these mischievous creatures were sneaking inside and causing damage.

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The story of the gremlins became widely known thanks to Roald Dahl, a famous children’s author and former RAF pilot, who wrote and illustrated a book about them. Walt Disney almost turned the book into a movie, but the project was cancelled for reasons that were never fully explained. Dahl’s version of the myth even gave the gremlins a reason for causing trouble: they were upset that their forest home had been destroyed to build an airplane factory.

As a huge Gremlins fan, I always loved Murray Futterman’s crazy story about the gremlins messing with everything electronic. It’s the only hint we’ve ever gotten about them being tech-saboteurs in the movies! Because of that, Warner Bros. really should make the Gremmens comic book storyline official canon. Honestly, they should just make Gremlins 3 based on that comic – it would be amazing!

Gremlins have appeared in comics a few times before – once as an adaptation of the original movie by Marvel, and again when Dark Horse Comics republished Roald Dahl’s book, leading to more comics based on his version of the creatures. But Gremmens is the first comic to truly capture how scary Gremlins can be, and it deserves to be much more well-known.

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2025-12-25 05:47