Columbus

More Mogwai mayhem is on the way.

A third “Gremlins” movie is officially in the works and eyeing a theatrical release ahead of the 2027 holiday season, Warner Bros. Discovery President and Chief Executive David Zaslav announced Thursday during the company’s third-quarter earnings call. The upcoming project is set to hit theaters Nov. 19, 2027, and will reunite original “Gremlins” scribe Chris Columbus with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, which produced the first two “Gremlins” films.

Columbus will direct and produce the film and Spielberg returns as an executive producer, Zaslav said. The new “Gremlins” film will be franchise’s first movie in more than 30 years. Columbus will write the script with “Final Destination Bloodlines” directing duo Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein.

Oscar nominee Columbus introduced audiences to the mysterious and maniacal ways of the Mogwai — furry, wide-eyed bipeds with giant ears — with the release of “Gremlins” in 1984. The first film, directed by Joe Dante, established the three nonnegotiables of Mogwai care: Don’t get them wet, don’t feed them after midnight and don’t expose them to bright light. Both the 1984 release and its 1990 sequel, also directed by Dante but written by Charles S. Haas, tracks the havoc that arises when the first two rules are ignored, from unstoppable spawning to unruly mutation into Gremlins.

The “Gremlins” films starred Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Howie Mandel as the voice of two-toned Mogwai Gizmo and Frank Welker as the voices of the films’ antagonists.

Though it has been decades since the last “Gremlins” movie hit the big screen, the furballs got their own spotlight in the 2023 animated prequel TV series “Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai.”

The series, from showrunner and executive producer Tze Chun, took a deep look into its namesake creatures’ origins, briefly hinted at in the first film by shopkeeper Mr. Wing (played by the Chinese American actor Keye Luke). “Secrets of the Mogwai” zooms in on Mr. Wing’s relationship with Gizmo, who became a through line in the “Gremlins” movies.

Series executive producer Brendan Hay told The Times in 2023 that setting “Secrets of the Mogwai” in 1920s China was “a chance to own the somewhat throwaway origin that the Mogwai have in the films.”

“In the films, it’s clear that they’re of Chinese origin, but it’s not that developed,” Hay said. “This is our chance to tell that story and really embrace it [by] actually try[ing] to find a place for Mogwai that fits into Chinese mythology, or at least builds off of existing Chinese mythology, and have fun in that world.”

Galligan hinted this summer that a new “Gremlins” movie was in the works while appearing at Comic-Con Manchester. According to a TikTok, the actor said “they’ve come up with a script” and that Warner Bros. was “incredibly interested in doing it, apparently it’s waiting upon Mr. Spielberg to read it and approve it.”

“Gremlins” is the latest beloved title rebooted at Warner Bros. Discovery in recent years. Others include “The Lord of the Rings,” “Harry Potter” and “Practical Magic.”

Times staff writers Tracy Brown and Samantha Masunaga contributed to this report.

Oct. 10 (UPI) — In advance Monday’s holiday, the White House this week released a statement celebrating Columbus Day and singing the praises of the maligned explorer.

“This Columbus Day, we honor his life with reverence and gratitude, and we pledge to reclaim his extraordinary legacy of faith, courage, perseverance, and virtue from the left-wing arsonists who have sought to destroy his name and dishonor his memory,” the release said. Columbus Day is celebrated Monday.

In recent years, activists have called for Columbus Day to be renamed Indigenous People’s Day. About 10 states have officially recognized the day, sometimes with different names, such as American Indian Heritage Day or Native Americans’ Day.

Though he has been widely considered the person who discovered America, he never set foot on North American land. The Oct. 12 holiday actually commemorates the day he landed in the Bahamas. Also, he couldn’t discover a land that was already inhabited.

Norse explorer Leif Eriksson is the first European believed to have sailed to North America. He landed in Canada 500 years earlier than Columbus’ voyage.

Though the White House press release doesn’t say the Italian explorer landed in America, it calls Columbus a “true American hero.”

“Outrageously, in recent years, Christopher Columbus has been a prime target of a vicious and merciless campaign to erase our history, slander our heroes, and attack our heritage,” the release said. “Before our very eyes, left-wing radicals toppled his statues, vandalized his monuments, tarnished his character, and sought to exile him from our public spaces. Under my leadership, those days are finally over — and our Nation will now abide by a simple truth: Christopher Columbus was a true American hero, and every citizen is eternally indebted to his relentless determination.”

The reality is that Columbus enslaved native peoples, and he brutally attacked and killed those who tried to revolt. He took the native Taino “Indians” in the Caribbean back to Spain and sold them into slavery. To prevent rebellion, he would have the bodies of those he killed paraded through the streets of what is now the Dominican Republic.

“They were very well built, with very handsome bodies and very good faces,” Columbus wrote in his diary. “They do not carry arms or know them. … They should be good servants.”

Also, because the native population was not immune to European diseases, many died of illnesses like smallpox. When Columbus arrived on the island of Hispaniola (now Dominican Republic and Haiti) there were about 250,000 native people there. By 1517, only about 14,000 were left.

“This Columbus Day, more than 500 years since Columbus arrived in the New World, we follow his example, we echo his resolve, and we offer our gratitude for his life of valor and grit,” the White House’s release said. “Above all, we commit to restoring a Nation that once again dares to tame the unknown, honors our rich cultural inheritance, and offers rightful praise to our Creator above.”

The Spanish crown eventually stripped Columbus of his governorship of Hispaniola when it learned of his abuses. He admitted to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella that the accusations were true.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — U.S. veterans of the war in Afghanistan are telling a commission reviewing decisions on the 20-year conflict that their experience was not only hell, but also confounding, demoralizing and at times humiliating.

The bipartisan Afghanistan War Commission aims to reflect such veterans’ experiences in a report due to Congress next year, which will analyze key strategic, diplomatic, military and operational decisions made between June 2001 and the chaotic withdrawal in August 2021.

The group released its second interim report on Tuesday, drawing no conclusions yet but identifying themes emerging from thousands of pages of government documents; some 160 interviews with cabinet-level officials, military commanders, diplomats, Afghan and Pakistani leaders and others; and forums with veterans like one recently held at a national Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Columbus, Ohio.

“What can we learn from the Afghanistan War?” asked an Aug. 12 discussion session with four of the commission’s 16 members. What they got was two straight hours of dozens of veterans’ personal stories — not one glowingly positive, and most saturated in frustration and disappointment.

“I think the best way to describe that experience was awful,” said Marine veteran Brittany Dymond, who served in Afghanistan in 2012.

Navy veteran Florence Welch said the 2021 withdrawal made her ashamed she ever served there.

“It turned us into a Vietnam, a Vietnam that none of us worked for,” she said.

Members of Congress, some driven by having served in the war, created the independent commission several months after the withdrawal, after an assessment by the Democratic administration of then-President Biden faulted the actions of President Trump’s first administration for constraining U.S. options. A Republican review, in turn, blamed Biden. Views of the events remain divided, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered yet another review this spring.

The commission wants to understand the bigger picture of a conflict that spanned four presidential administrations and cost more than 2,400 American lives, said Co-Chair Dr. Colin Jackson.

“So we’re interested in looking hard at the end of U.S. engagement in Afghanistan, but we’re equally interested in understanding the beginning, the middle and the end,” he said in an interview in Columbus.

Co-chair Shamila Chaudhary said the panel is also exploring more sweeping questions.

“So our work is not just about what the U.S. did in Afghanistan but what the U.S. should be doing in any country where it deems it has a national security interest,” she said. “And not just should it be there, but how it should behave, what values does it guide itself by, and how does it engage with individuals who are very different from themselves.”

Jackson said one of the commission’s priorities is making sure the final report, due in August 2026, isn’t “unrecognizable to any veteran of the Afghanistan conflict.”

“The nature of the report should be representative of every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine experience,” he said.

Dymond told commissioners a big problem was the mission.

“You cannot exert a democratic agenda, which is our foreign policy, you cannot do that on a culture of people who are not bought into your ideology,” she said. “What else do we expect the outcome to be? And so we had two decades of service members lost and maimed because we’re trying to change an ideology that they didn’t ask for.”

The experience left eight-year Army veteran Steve Orf demoralized. He said he didn’t go there “to beat a bad guy.”

“Those of us who served generally wanted to believe that we were helping to improve the world, and we carried with us the hopes, values, and principles of the United States — values and principles that also seem to have been casualties of this war,” he told commissioners. “For many of us, faith with our leaders is broken and trust in our country is broken.”

Tuesday’s report identifies emerging themes of the review to include strategic drift, interagency incoherence, and whether the war inside Afghanistan and the counterterrorism war beyond were pursuing the same aims or at cross purposes.

It also details difficulties the commission has encountered getting key documents. According to the report, the Biden administration initially denied the commission’s requests for White House materials on the implementation of the February 2020 peace agreement Trump signed with the Taliban, called the Doha Agreement, and on the handling of the withdrawal, citing executive confidentiality concerns.

The transition to Trump’s second term brought further delays and complications, but since the commission has pressed the urgency of its mission with the new administration, critical intelligence and documents have now begun to flow, the report says.

Smyth and Aftoora-Orsagos write for the Associated Press.