Last July, it was announced that Apple was hoping to turn Terry Gilliam’s 1981 film “Time Bandits” into a new series for its fledgling streaming service. Since then, we haven’t heard a peep about the production. However, today it was reported by Deadline that Taika Waititi has decided to sign up for the project, and our anticipation for this series jumped about 4000%.
The report says that Waititi has signed on to co-write and direct the pilot episode of the potential series, co-produced by Anonymous Content, Paramount Television, and MRC. Unlike Netflix and some of the other streaming services, apparently, Apple still wants to utilize the pilot program to decide whether or not the company wants to move forward with a full season. However, with a filmmaker like Waititi involved, and source material from Gilliam, we find it highly unlikely that a full season won’t come to fruition.
“Time Bandits” tells the story of a young boy and the six dwarves that spawn from the depths of his closet. The six little people have a map of all the tears in the fabric of space and time, and along with the young boy, they explore various times in order to steal riches. Obviously, this sounds like something suited for Terry Gilliam, considering he helmed the original, but it also seems like a perfect fit for Waititi and his own brand of off-beat humor.
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Waititi is no stranger to TV directing recently. Not only has he signed on for “Time Bandits,” but the helmer is responsible for at least one of the episodes of “What We Do in the Shadows” on FX and just wrapped work on an episode of the upcoming “Star Wars” series “The Mandalorian.” And outside of his TV work, the filmmaker is putting the finishing touches on his “Jojo Rabbit” feature film, which is scheduled to be released later in the year.