Terry Gilliam Had an Idea for a ‘Time Bandits’ Sequel Starring ‘Whoever Was Still Alive’

In their continuing quest to funnel billions of dollars into great-looking, yet wildly unprofitable TV shows, Apple TV+ just released an adaptation of the 1981 fantasy film Time Bandits. It stars Lisa Kudrow as a thief who uses time portals to loot history, but apparently hasn’t gotten around to taking out Hitler (fingers crossed for Season Two). 

Time Bandits 2024 was produced by Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement, and has in no way involved the original film’s director Terry Gilliam, although Waititi and Clement have claimed that there isn’t any bad blood between them and the former Monty Python animator.

Last year there were reports that Gilliam had visited the set and “wasn’t happy.” Allegedly he “kept groaning and making remarks” before ultimately storming off the set. But Waititi and Clement shot down those rumors, telling the Associated Press that they’ve never even met Gilliam. Although Waititi did note that the story could be true if Gilliam “was in disguise. If he secretly flew to New Zealand.”

If Gilliam does have any reason to be miffed at the show — and there’s no evidence that he is — it would probably owe to the fact that he once tried to make his own Time Bandits follow-up, but the project ultimately fell apart like, well, like countless other Terry Gilliam projects.

Gilliam has claimed that Warner Bros. asked him to make two more movies, forming a Time Bandits trilogy, back in the 1980s, but the deal came with the “caveat” that the cast couldn’t include the original’s little people actors, aka the titular Time Bandits. Gilliam’s response? “Fuck off!”

Incidentally, the Apple show similarly avoided casting little people in the lead roles, seemingly to sidestep any potential controversy, with Clement noting that they didn’t want to “stereotype little people as magical creatures.” Although that decision was later criticized by some for “failing to provide on-screen opportunities for little people.”

In the 1990s, Gilliam actively worked on a script for a Time Bandits sequel with his frequent collaborator Charles McKeown. As he told Any Good Films? earlier this year, their concept was to follow the original characters, now “old, successful and forgotten Time Bandits. And their daughters take over for them.” Gilliam and McKeown wrote the script for two of the original actors’ real-life daughters, with the rest of the cast, “whoever was still alive … tagging along.” 

The screenplay also found the supreme being of the universe going “on a holiday” and ceding control to a “schizophrenic stand-in God.” But the movie never ended up happening because of 9/11 and Hallmark. 

Apparently, Time Bandits II was going to be a “two-part TV miniseries sequel for Hallmark Entertainment” — this was in 2001, before the company realized that it could just keep making money by churning out cheapo movies in which Candace Cameron Bure-tier stars discover the true meaning of Christmas. But as Gilliam recounted, after the September 11th attacks, Hallmark “decided that an escapist comedy film wouldn’t be right. I guess all their greeting cards turned into grieving cards.”

A-plus pun work there, Terry. 

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