The long-rumoured Gremlins reboot is definitely going ahead, Chris Colombus has confirmed.

Fans of the classic comedy horror will be excited to know that writer and producer Chris reckons he has found a way of doing something new with the film now that such a long time has passed.

He told Collider of rumours of a reboot: “It is real. I am involved. When I finished Gremlins, and the first Gremlins was released, I was asked to write the sequel, and said there was no place else to go. Now this was before the pre-crazy-franchise-era of Hollywood where everything is a franchise.

“So obviously a long 30 years has passed, and I thought, ‘Ok, we can do this. We can actually find a way not to remake the first movie, but to take those characters and do something interesting.’”

Chris added that he had picked up tips for how to go about it by seeing what JJ Abrams had done with Star Trek.

He said: “I realised, not from the Star Wars phase, but from JJ Abrams’ other movies, when he did Star Trek, he has a sense of taking that short of sense of nostalgia we all want and bringing it forward like he brought Leonard Nimoy into the first Star Trek.

JJ Abrams
JJ Abrams (Evan Agostini/AP)

“And that to me was why we connected to that and it was painfully obvious when we saw the Star Wars trailer recently that when you saw Han Solo and Chewbacca, we all had tears in our eyes, because we want that feeling again.

“So I thought, okay, it’s cool. If we can pull it off — if we can create that feeling but deliver something new to the audience, then maybe we can do a really terrific Gremlins reboot.”