The Big Picture

Collider’s Meredith Loftus talks with the cast and creatives of
Gremlins: The Wild Batch
at SDCC 2024.

The Wild Batch
, Season 2 of
Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai
, promises an epic, fun, and weirder adventure in the Wild West.
Producers Tze Chun and Brendan Hay join cast members A.J. LoCascio, Ming-Na Wen, Izaac Wang, and Gabrielle Nevaeh to discuss new characters, fresh dynamics, and all-new challenges for the Wing family, including Gizmo’s evil tendencies Simu Liu’s Chang.

Adventure awaits in Gremlins: The Wild Batch! This animated prequel to the classic Gremlins flicks transports audiences to 1920s Shanghai, where a young Sam Wing (Izaac Wang) crosses paths with the adorably cute Mogwai, Gizmo (A.J. LoCascio). Sam’s tasked with getting Gizmo back home, but things quickly go sideways in the best possible way. Along with street-savvy teen Elle (Gabrielle Nevaeh), the gang ventures through the Chinese countryside, bumping into—and sometimes battling—an array of fantastical monsters and mischievous spirits from Chinese folklore. All the while, they’re being chased by a greedy industrialist who’s amassing an army of evil Gremlins.

The fun is far from over. With a second season, titled The Wild Batch, slated for fall, our free-spirited crew is jetting from Shanghai to the iconic hills of San Francisco. As a new journey awaits, Collider’s Meredith Loftus chatted with executive producers Tze Chun and Brendan Hay, as well as cast members Wang, Ming-Na Wen, LoCascio, and Nevaeh, at San Diego Comic-Con 2024 about their respective story arcs and what to expect in the upcoming season, including a batch of new talent like Simu Liu, Will Forte, and some original Gremlins alum! Check out our interview with the cast and crew in the player above, or read the full conversation below.

Gremlins (2022) The adventures of Sam Wing in his youth and Gizmo the Mogwai in China.Release Date 2020-00-00 Seasons 0

COLLIDER: Atthe end of Gremlins: The Secrets of Mogwai, we see Noggin sail off to San Francisco. Why did you make the decision to change the location for Season 2?

TZE CHUN: In Season 1, we featured a lot of creatures and spirits from Chinese mythology, and from the very first pitch, we started talking about Season 2 and what’s a new location where we can have Mogwai chaos take place. We just came up with the Wild West. Mogwai are kind of like American mythology after the ‘80s movies because people reference them, and so we said, “What’s the place that has a lot of tall tales and mythology? The Wild West.” Our goal was to do a Season 2 that was more epic, bigger, funnier, weirder.

I am so excited to see how that unfolds honestly. I heard at the panel today you screened an episode. What was that like sharing that with an audience?

BRENDAN HAY: So long-awaited. We cannot wait to have them see it, especially since Season 2 kicks off with getting to see the rare thing of Gizmo having a little bit of evil Mogwai tendencies, which is something we’ve never gotten to see in the franchise before and something we get to explore in Season 2. I love that the audience got their first tease of that.

What can you say about some of Gizmo’s evil tendencies?

AJ LOCASCIO: As we know, Gremlins are complicated creatures. Gizmo’s been on the straight and narrow, trying to resist some of those Gremlin-like urges, or evil Mogwai as we call them in the show. Now he’s coming to terms with that and trying to deal with that tightrope walk of temptation.

‘The Wild Batch’ Promises More Adventures for More Grandpa and Hon
Image via Max

One of my favorite things about Season 1 was the found family element between Elle and Sam. Now that Elle is part of the family, what can you tease about the family dynamics when we pick up a year later?

GABRIELLE NEVAEH: Elle is still trying to find her place. She’s still trying to figure out where she fits in with Sam, Gizmo, and now Sam’s family. We learn more about where Elle came from, which is exciting; she didn’t just fall out of a coconut tree. [Laughs] She has parents, and she has a whole backstory that we get to explore. So, it’s been nice to dive into Elle’s history and her vulnerability. We see her struggle with becoming a good person. She’s a good person with “bad person” tendencies, so we see her kind of fight off the urges that maybe Gizmo might be dealing with a little bit, as well. She tweaks that a little bit. So, that’s been a fun journey during Season 2.

Ming-Na, what would you say now that you’re like Elle’s adoptive mom? Is there a challenge in that for Fong moving forward?

MING-NA WEN: Well, Fong has quite a lot on her hands between dealing with Grandpa, voiced by the wonderful James Hong, and dealing with Sam. So, Elle is the daughter she never had. For me, it’s really trying to create that maternal voice without becoming the nag. I think the way these guys are writing her character and giving her the sense of adventure that she is starting to realize she shouldn’t reject and be able to participate with is going to give her a greater spectrum of personality.

CHUN: Grandpa Fong and Hon were fan-favorites in Season 1, so we really want to make sure that there was a really fun story for them in Season 2, as well.

Simu Liu Is ‘The Wild Batch’s Han Solo
Image by Jefferson Chacon 

Speaking of Season 2, news came out of a lot of new voices coming to join the cast, including Simu Liu joining the main cast. Can you tease anything about his new character, Chang?

CHUN: Well, his name is Chang. I think that we cannot tease anything about him.

HAY: He’s a little bit of our show’s Han Solo. He’s also kind of the best/worst mentor.

CHUN: He’s a really fun character who almost serves as a mentor to Sam and is along for a lot of the adventure. It’s kind of the push and pull of, “Okay, this guy is so fun to hang out with.” Guys who are really fun to hang out with sometimes don’t have your best interests at heart.

Izaac, what can you tease about Sam’s adventures with Chang?

IZAAC WANG: The main thing is just, as they said, he’s Sam’s mentor, and Sam is influenced by Chang’s actions.

HAY: Also, Chang is a little bit of their liaison to America because he straddles the line a little bit more of having both his Chinese ancestry and being born in America. So it brings a little bit of a different point of view. Again, it’s a different point of view to add to our cast, to have a lot of different points of view of where everybody has come from.

‘Gremlins’ Season 2 Brings on a Wild Batch of Talent
Including some faces from the original Gremlins movie!

CHUN: We had such a fun time with the cast in Season 1, and we have a lot of new names in Season 2. Brendan has the best memory, so…

HAY: I’ll rattle them off: we’ve got Will Forte, Ronny Chieng, Jimmy O. Yang, Keith David, George Takei now as a regular, Kelly Hu, Michael Paul Chan.

CHUN: Did we say Keith David? We’re saying it twice. Keith David’s the best.

Keith David is legendary, so he deserves another mention. One that’s really exciting is Michael Paul Chan because he is a Gremlins alum. What can you tease about now incorporating more of the movie elements into the series?

CHUN: We always wanted to have some Easter eggs for fans of the Gremlin movies and Amblin movies in general, but also bring in new fans. But Michael Paul Chan was definitely somebody that was part of the Amblin family.

Also, Daniel Clamp is coming back, John Glover. Are we getting more about the Clamp family legacy?

HAY: Teasing it out, the Clamp fortune has to come from somewhere, and maybe we’ll find that out in Season 2. But he was very high, also, on our list of original Gremlins actors who we want to bring back because he’s so much fun in everything he does. So, any chance.

‘Gremlins: The Wild Batch’ Is Set To Explore More of Chinese-American History

What do you hope fans really take away from Season 2? You really made us fall in love with the Wing family coming into Season 1. I’d love to hear what you hope fans take away from Season 2.

CHUN: I hope that they get to experience a big fun adventure with the characters that they love, laugh a little bit, get scared a little bit, and just get more Gremlins content just because there has not been a lot in the last 30 years.

HAY: And enjoy three generations of the Wing family this season all getting to play off each other.

WEN: I just love the focus. The spotlight has been turned more towards Chinese culture, and now we’re getting to discover Chinese-American history, certain issues that happened back in the 1920s, and all the mythology because, in the original films, it was more peripheral. So, it’s been great to have that spotlight on the culture.

Gremlins: The Wild Batch premieres on Max on October 2.

Watch on Max