Warner Bros. Animation released the first image from the upcoming Gremlins animated prequel series, Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai.

The image was released in conjunction with the news that Secrets of the Mogwai will debut its first episode at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival.

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Released in 1984, Gremlins features a group of adorable furry creatures called mogwai that can't be exposed to sunlight or water, and can't be fed after midnight. Sunlight, in particular, can cause the creatures to die, while water causes more mogwai to spawn and feeding them after midnight can turn them into evil reptilian monsters called gremlins. A sequel, The New Batch, was released in 1990.

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In 2019, it was announced that an animated Gremlins prequel series was in development for the yet-to-be-named WarnerMedia streaming service. According to a newly released synopsis, "In Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai, we travel back to 1920s Shanghai to reveal the story of how 10-year-old Sam Wing (future shop owner Mr. Wing in the 1984 movie) met the young Mogwai called Gizmo. Along with a teenage street thief named Elle, Sam and Gizmo take a perilous journey through the Chinese countryside, encountering, and sometimes battling, colorful monsters and spirits from Chinese folklore. On their quest to return Gizmo to his family and uncover a legendary treasure, they are pursued by a power-hungry industrialist and his growing army of evil Gremlins."

"It's good. It's going to be good, yeah," original Gremlins director Joe Dante previously explained while giving the prequel his seal of approval. "I'm very pleased with the way it's going. 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. It's for HBO Max, a new streaming variant of HBO."

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Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai features the voice talents of Ming-Na Wen, B.D. Wong, James Hong, Matthew Rhys, Izaac Wang, A.J. LoCascio and Gabrielle Green. The series has yet to receive a premiere date.

Source: HBO Max