Warner Bros.' planned "Gremlins" remake has sprung back to life, with "Disturbia" and "Goosebumps' writer Carl Ellsworth tackling the script. Deadline reports that Chris Columbus, who penned the 1984 original, is on board to produce alongside Steven Spielberg.

Directed by Joe Dante, "Gremlins" was a Christmas-themed horror comedy about a young man who's given an unusual pet that, when it comes in contact with water, spawns other creatures that turn into destructive little monsters. The film itself spawned a 1990 sequel, "Gremlins 2: The New Batch."

Dante last year addressed the numerous attempts to remake the film, noting it's particularly difficult for writers and producers, as they have to receive approval from Warner Bros. and Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, which jointly hold the rights. There's also the matter of understanding what made the original work.

“I do know [...] that there’s a script being written now,” he explained, “and the tricky thing is that I’m not sure that the people making the movie now understand what the original appeal was of the first movie, which was not beloved by the studio until it started making money. When they started making a sequel, they didn’t understand what we had done on the original to make it successful. So they hired me to come back and make the sequel. Because nobody understood it. So it will be very interesting to see what they come up with.”