TIME BANDITS Coming to TV?

In an online Q&A over at The Guardian, filmmaker Terry Gilliam covered a number of topics ranging from how feels about being a director-for-hire to political thoughts to Doctor Who (he’s not much of a fan…).

One item of note: Time Bandits is among the projects Gilliam is considering for a TV run, along with another fantasy series set in New York:

“Yes I am! We are involved in two possibilities – one, a TV series based on Time Bandits, another based on a script by Richard LaGravanese and I wrote after Fisher King, called The Defective Detective. We’re currently adapting a two hour film into a six hour series. It’s about a middle aged New York cop who was once a hero who has grown fat and cynical and is in the middle of a breakdown, ending up in a child’s fantasy world where the rules of the mean streets of New York no longer apply. The best way to kill a dragon is no longer a gun, but a tree branch you think is a sword.”

Gilliam has produced a string of box office hits and critically-acclaimed films, among them The Fisher King, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Brazil, 12 Monkeys, and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. But he has a special place for Time Bandits:

“To me, Time Bandits was the most important film in my film career, and still is the biggest success I had in America. It opened the doors to Brazil and everything that followed. What I love the most is it’s full of interesting ideas, exciting enough for adults, and intelligent enough for children.”

https://youtu.be/Yd4DBq8a2y0

_______________

Time Bandits is the story of a young boy named Kevin, who discovers his wardrobe is a portal to other worlds. He encounters a group of dwarves — Randall, Fidgit, Strutter, Og, Wally, and Vermin — who were once employed by the Supreme Being to repair holes in the fabric of spacetime using a special map. Instead, they use the map to steal riches.

Gilliam considers Time Bandits the first entry in his “Trilogy of Imagination” films, the other two being Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. The three films focus on the struggles of society and man’s efforts to escape them. In Time Bandits, that struggle is from a child’s perspective, where Brazil follows a man in his thirties and Munchausen focuses on an elderly man.

Gilliam also recently provided commentary on a newly released animation that had been cut from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The “new” animations are included on the new Blu-Ray/DVD release:

https://youtu.be/1oGpR_TP7ME