One Superfan’s Love of ‘Gremlins’ Led to the Discovery of a Three-Hour Cut Not Seen in Over 40 Years

Gremlins Museum founder/curator Ian Grant talks about his recently discovered and reconstructed assembly cut of Joe Dante's 1984 classic, which was recently unveiled at a secret screening for prominent horror filmmakers.

Earlier this year, some of the best writers and directors in contemporary horror received an intriguing invitation. Drew Hancock (“Companion”), Dan Berk and Robert Olsen (“Novocaine”), Brian Duffield (“No One Will Save You”), Akela Cooper (“M3GAN”), and others were told that if they convened at the Verve screening room in Hollywood on April 30, they would see a movie no one else had ever seen, and if they missed it, they would never forgive themselves.

The invitation was mostly correct; although most, if not all, of the attendees surely had seen Joe Dante’s 1984 horror-comedy classic “Gremlins,” none — except Dante himself, in attendance to introduce the screening — had ever seen the two-hour-and-45-minute cut that unspooled that evening. Filled with extended versions of set pieces that made their way into the final version, as well as completely excised scenes and subplots, the secret screening’s version of “Gremlins” offered a tantalizing look at how the movie evolved from its initial assembly to the finely tuned version that became a massive hit upon its release.

It was the first time the 1983 assembly cut had screened in over 40 years, and a testament to the diligence and obsessiveness of Ian Grant, perhaps the world’s most enthusiastic “Gremlins” fan and scholar. For several years now, Grant has been running the Gremlins Museum online resource, an independent archive and preservation project devoted to the history of “Gremlins” and “Gremlins 2: The New Batch.” Centered on the world’s largest known collection of original Gremlins props, puppets, production materials, and behind-the-scenes artifacts, the museum exists to preserve the legacy of the films and the practical-effects artists who brought them to life.

The museum began with Grant’s lifelong dream of owning an actual Gremlin puppet. “I have vivid memories of riding my bike as a kid and wondering how someone could possibly buy one of these creatures from the movies,” Grant said. “That fascination never really left me. Around 2020, one of the rarest first movie puppets more or less fell into my lap, which really got the wheels spinning hard. I think every once in a while, you have those little moments in life that strongly push you in a direction, and that was one of them for me.”

The creation of the nearly three-hour assembly cut that screened at Verve began in February 2026, when Grant spoke with “Gremlins” creature creator Chris Walas. “Chris remembered that the original Dorry’s Tavern sequence had a lot more material than what ended up in the finished film, possibly as much as 20 additional minutes in the first assembly cut,” Grant said. “I took that information to Joe Dante and asked if that much footage had ever existed and, more importantly, whether any tapes of it might still be around.”

Dante said he would take a look, but Grant didn’t expect much. “I figured he was probably just being nice,” Grant said. “A few days later, though, he got back to me with a pretty incredible discovery from his personal archive: a VHS tape labeled ’11/23/83 – Gremlins 1st Assembly.'” Dante wasn’t even sure of what was on the tape and didn’t have a VCR to play it on, so he told Grant he’d send it to him. “Based on the date, and after comparing it to a shooting script binder I have here, it immediately looked like this could be the long-lost first assembly of the film.”

When the package arrived, it contained not one VHS tape but two: the first assembly and a second cassette labeled “‘Gremlins’ Outtakes.'” Grant immediately took both takes to a professional media preservation company in Seattle for supervised digitization. “At more than 40 years old, there was no guarantee they would contain anything usable,” Grant said, “but I felt pretty confident we’d at least find something unique on them. Fortunately, both tapes turned out to be a treasure trove of long-lost ‘Gremlins’ material, and my brain immediately started racing with the possibilities of what we could do with all of this new footage.”

When Grant got home with the files, he put together a small chat group with “a few of the biggest ‘Gremlins’ fans I know, people who would really understand and appreciate what we were about to experience together. As I started sending them stills from the footage, I think one of them basically ended up taking the rest of the day off. It was just too much to process.” While the footage was undeniably of interest to Grant and his fellow “Gremlins” obsessives, he knew it would a challenge if screened for a general audience given that it was three hours of mostly raw production dialogue, no score, and unfinished creature sounds.

“That’s really what got the Screening Cut started,” Grant said. “The idea was to clean up the video and audio, uprez it to at least 2K, isolate the creature sounds and score from the theatrical cut, and then re-edit the entire movie into something that preserved the content, but could actually play for an audience.” Although Grant knew from the start that the material he had was incredible, he also knew a major challenge loomed ahead in rebuilding the film.

“I had to mentally prepare myself for the massive task of essentially re-editing a three-hour version of ‘Gremlins,’ but deep down I knew it was the right decision if this material was ever going to have a chance of getting Joe Dante’s approval for a public screening,” Grant said, adding that there were plenty of technical hurdles that were immediately evident.

“The first big issue was the constant VHS audio hum running through both tapes, which made cleaning up the dialogue difficult right from the start,” Grant said. Another major task was replacing the temporary creature sounds. The rough cut used very early placeholder audio for Gizmo and the Gremlins, and those sounds completely pulled you out of the movie. Thankfully, modern audio tools made it possible to isolate the finalized creature performances from the theatrical cut and carefully work them back into this version.”

Then there was the challenge of reconstructing the score. “Jerry Goldsmith’s music was originally timed very precisely to the theatrical version, but many scenes in this cut run several minutes longer,” Grant said. “That meant extending and restructuring parts of the score so the audience wouldn’t notice where the edits were happening. By the end, I probably had four or five different versions of the movie loaded into the project at once, all serving different restoration purposes.”

While Grant was working on the reconstruction, he received a message that gave him the impetus to speed things along and bring the assembly edit to completion. “I was contacted through Instagram by someone in L.A. who introduced himself as Scott Glassgold from 12:01 Films,” Grant said. “He wanted to organize a small but exclusive screening for people connected to his company, including the two ‘Gremlins 3’ writers, Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein. At that point, I hadn’t actually finished the project yet, but the screening gave me a finish line I hadn’t expected.”

Before he knew it, Grant’s “quiet, relaxing editing project” turned into a screening attended by several filmmakers he admired — including Dante himself. “So, no pressure or anything,” Grant said. “Scott presented the whole thing as a secret screening to a mysterious movie ‘that had never been seen before,’ so only a few people even knew what they were arriving to watch. It ended up being a really memorable evening, and people seemed genuinely surprised, excited by what they had just watched, and recognized the uniqueness of what just occurred.”

Grant now wants to get the assembly cut in front of more “Gremlins” fans and see their reaction, and is talking with Warner Bros. about how to make that happen. “I just want to be there when people get to see this for the first time,” Grant said. “I know how it felt for me to watch all of this footage, and I think it will be incredibly satisfying to experience that in a giant room full of superfans. Some of them will probably fly in just to see it, and I can’t wait to watch their brains explode a little when the movie suddenly goes in directions they don’t expect.”

Though the Gremlins Museum began as simply a personal collection, it has now expanded thanks to Grant’s collaborations with the original creators to preserve and archive their work. “A great example is scanning Chris Walas’ original Polaroids, the same photos he was sending to Joe Dante from the set to document the creature-building process,” Grant said. “Or sharing what are likely the highest-quality scans ever made of ‘Gremlins’ promotional slides, courtesy of Joe Dante’s personal collection. Being able to preserve and share material like that feels incredibly rewarding.”

Grant hopes to partner with other “Gremlins” and “Gremlins 2” creators as his preservation efforts continue; he’d love to connect with creature designer Rick Baker, for example. “He has an amazing collection of behind-the-scenes ‘Gremlins 2’ negatives that I would love to help scan and preserve,” Grany said. “Projects like those make it possible to tell a richer story about how these films were made, and they help keep the legacy of the artists who created them alive for future generations. For me, that’s become one of the most rewarding parts of all this. It’s not just about collecting the artifacts anymore. It’s about preserving the history behind them and making sure these stories continue to be discovered and appreciated by fans.”

For more information on the “Gremlins” assembly cut and to view Grant’s collection of “Gremlins” material, visit the Gremlins Museum website.