Cursed Genius Terry Gilliam Is Working On A ‘Time Bandits’ TV Series
By Jacob Hall/Oct. 8, 2015 1:00 pm EST
Check out Gilliam’s own comment on the Time Bandits TV series after the jump.
Wait. What? Tell us more about that Time Bandits show, sir!
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 been talking up The Defective Detective for a long time now and that description (while certainly very interesting) hasn’t changed much. A Time Bandits TV series, though, is from completely out of the blue. The last time we heard anything about something being done with Time Bandits, it was 2011 and phrases like “big-screen kids action franchise” were being thrown around. We don’t know anything about this new version and it already sounds better.
For those unfamiliar with the original 1981 film, Time Bandits follows a group of little people who are employed by the “Supreme Being” to repair holes in the spacetime continuum. Tiring of their work, they steal the map that charts all of time and space, embarking on a quest to journey throughout history, stealing stuff. Naturally, a normal kid gets pulled along on the journey. Even more naturally, everything goes wrong and they must confront the literal embodiment of evil. It’s all very silly and whimsical, containing all of the slapstick and satire of Gilliam’s work with Monty Python while hinting at the dark and malicious themes that would arise in films like Brazil. If Gilliam thinks it could be a TV series, we trust his judgment.
