Someone just found a three-hour cut of the original Gremlins

Ian Grant, a dedicated collector who runs an unofficial Gremlins museum, has uncovered a three-hour workprint of the original 1984 film. Grant told IndieWire that he tracked down this massive extended cut through his network of prop collectors and archivists. The discovery adds a massive new chapter to the history of a franchise that has spawned multiple sequels and decades of video game adaptations.

The theatrical release of Joe Dante's creature feature clocks in at a brisk 106 minutes. This newly discovered version adds nearly an hour and a half of unseen footage, alternate takes, and extended sequences. Grant's museum project has been a long-running labor of love. Finding a completely different edit of a 42-year-old movie is a different tier of preservation entirely.

That is a lot of Mogwai

I love the original film, but the idea of sitting through three hours of puppet-based property damage sounds like an endurance test. The pacing of the theatrical cut is what makes it work so well. Still, from a historical perspective, seeing the raw assembly of practical effects shots and deleted character arcs is a goldmine for fans.

Workprints are rough drafts. They usually lack final sound mixing, color correction, and polished visual effects. They exist purely for the director and editors to shape the narrative before trimming the fat. Grant is currently working on digitizing the footage to ensure it does not deteriorate further. Tape degrades quickly. The fact that this survived in a private collection for over four decades is incredibly lucky.

The interactive aftermath

Whenever a massive piece of 1980s cinema history surfaces, it is hard not to think about the licensed media ecosystem that surrounded it. Atari pushed out a Gremlins game for the 2600 and 5200 right alongside the 1984 theatrical release. It was a basic action game where players frantically caught Mogwai before they could eat food after midnight.

A year later, players got Gremlins: The Adventure. This text-based interactive fiction title actually managed to capture the dark comedy of the film better than the action games did. The franchise hit its interactive peak a few years later with the 1990 NES adaptation of Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Sunsoft handled the development. They delivered a top-down action platformer with incredible music and surprisingly tight controls. You play as Gizmo, armed with a genetically modified tomato and a bow made out of a paperclip. It is exactly the kind of weird, hyper-focused adaptation that made the 8-bit era so fascinating.

Waiting on the studio

The series kept popping up in the gaming space long after the films left theaters. We got Gremlins: Unleashed! in 2001 for the Game Boy Color, and a mini-game collection called Gremlins: Gizmo in 2011. None of them quite matched the high bar set by Sunsoft, but they proved the license had staying power.

There is no word yet on whether Warner Bros. Will step in to release this three-hour cut officially, or if it will remain a museum exclusive. Studio legal departments are notoriously protective of unreleased material. For now, it is just nice to know that lost media of this scale is still out there waiting to be found in random basements and storage lockers.