We just unearthed this set of Gremlins Teaser Trailer Storyboards by John Alvin! A fan asked us about availability of art from Gremlins, so we started researching the archives of the Estate of John Alvin, and lo and behold: a full set of storyboards for a finished advanced movie trailer!
Each one of the 17 images, posted below in sequence, were painted by hand as 5 x 7 fully executed paintings. The script is below the paintings and is original from the time, of course! If that doesn’t show us all just how much the movie and illustration worlds have changed, I don’t know what would! Beyond how great and exciting these are for fans of Gremlins, seeing the actual teaser trailer and finding exact moments captured from the storyboards…that’s just ultra-cool for movie geeks, especially when those storyboards were done by John Alvin, who did the official one-sheet for the film!
Sad to say, John did do some other sets of storyboards that became trailers, but the art from them has gone the way of whatever art director he was working with at the time. Notably, he did several of them for Jurassic Park. Two sets were used for the finished promotional trailers for the film, but none of the art survived.
Here is the Gremlins trailer, though, which you can watch to see his paintings come to life, and enjoy the messaging recreated in voiceover. (Here is a link if you can’t see the video here.)
For those with interest in purchasing this set, I’m happy to report (and sorry to break it to interested parties) that we sold the whole set to a big fan and they are thrilled to add it to their collection!
Whether you might have been in the market or not, we’re betting it’s still going to be the coolest Christmas movie production art you’ll see this year!
Wouldn’t it be so great if more of this historic art existed now, having survived the process of filming and campaigning the movies of our youth? At least here we have a great example of hand painted campaign art by John Alvin for 1984’s Gremlins, a true Christmas cult classic!