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Time Bandits TV show for Apple TV

Started by Mister Six, February 09, 2019, 01:47:46 AM

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Mister Six

This was announced in July last year but I couldn't find a thread and it's news to me: https://deadline.com/2018/07/time-bandits-apple-tv-series-deal-terry-gilliam-anonymous-content-paramount-television-mrc-1202435077/

Limited Gilliam involvement by the sounds of it though. Reckon they'll actually have six dwarves and a kid as the stars?

QuoteIn its latest series play, Apple is closing a deal for the rights to turn the beloved Terry Gilliam-directed fantasy film Time Bandits into a TV series. I'm told the series will be developed as a co-production between Anonymous Content, Paramount Television and Media Rights Capital. Gilliam will be a non-writing executive producer alongside Anonymous Content and MRC.

Released in 1980, Time Bandits is a dark, irreverent adventure about imagination, bravery and the nature of our dreams. It follows the time-traveling adventures of an 11-year-old history buff named Kevin who, one night, stumbles on six dwarfs who emerge from his closet. They are former workers of the Supreme Being who have stolen a map that charts all the holes in the space-time fabric, using it to hop from one historical era to the next in order to steal riches. Throughout the movie, they meet various historical and fictional characters, including Napoleon Bonaparte and Robin Hood, while the Supreme Being simultaneously tries to catch up to them and retrieve the map.

Time Bandits was made by Handmade Films, the film shingle that former Beatles guitarist George Harrison hatched with Denis O'Brien that began with Life of Brian, the 1979 comedy made by Gilliam and his Monty Python cohorts. While the company generated films like Mona Lisa and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, mounting debt that was guaranteed by the former Beatle led Harrison to exclaim My Sweet Lord, and he ended up suing O'Brien after the company dissolved. But Time Bandits, a quirky cult favorite, might never have gotten made without Handmade, so a TV series is a fitting nod to a bold little company's legacy.

mothman

Well, Dinklage is going to be looking for work. Shoo-in as Randall. Unless they get Warwick Davies. Who else? Tony Cox from Bad Santa. Danny Woodbury from Seinfeld...

Norton Canes

Excuse my ignorance but what's a 'shingle' in this context?

Mister Six

Christ knows. Some wanky inside speak exclusive to that site I think. The last paragraph is nigh incomprehensible.

Bazooka

Quote from: Mister Six on February 09, 2019, 04:10:54 AM
Christ knows. Some wanky inside speak exclusive to that site I think. The last paragraph is nigh incomprehensible.

Ha, fucking hell I thought I was alright at puzzles, but that paragraph is something else.

mothman

A shingle is like a sign advertising a business. You might be a professional of some kind or a craftsman or retailer; when you moved into a town to set up your business, you'd hang your shingle outside, above the door, wherever. A more erudite writer might have called Handmade a marque, perhaps.

olliebean

#6
One meaning of shingle is a small sign hung in front of a business (presumably originally painted on a shingle, meaning a tile). There's an idiom, to hang out a shingle, meaning to set up some sort of professional undertaking, and shingle appears to have evolved to mean the undertaking itself, as well as the notional sign that is hung outside to identify it.

<edit> bugger, beaten to it...

Norton Canes


ToneLa

I can't read descriptions like "a quirky cult favorite" without detecting a wee bit of condescension

mothman


Phil_A

Not sure what story there is to tell with Time Bandits that wasn't covered in the original film.

St_Eddie

Quote from: Phil_A on February 09, 2019, 12:03:42 PM
Not sure what story there is to tell with Time Bandits that wasn't covered in the original film.

I've got a horrible feeling that it's going to be a remake and no effort whatsoever will be put into keeping the TV series within the continuity of the film.

Shit Good Nose

Is it Apple attempting to copy the success of the 12 Monkeys series?

St_Eddie

Quote from: Shit Good Nose on February 09, 2019, 07:46:03 PM
Is it Apple attempting to copy the success of the 12 Monkeys series?

There was a 12 Monkeys series?  Huh, I never knew.

olliebean

Quote from: St_Eddie on February 09, 2019, 08:38:47 PM
There was a 12 Monkeys series?  Huh, I never knew.

I'd advise watching the film again instead.

St_Eddie

Quote from: olliebean on February 09, 2019, 09:01:28 PM
I'd advise watching the film again instead.

Ah, gotcha.  Thanks for the tip.

Shit Good Nose

Quote from: St_Eddie on February 09, 2019, 08:38:47 PM
There was a 12 Monkeys series?  Huh, I never knew.

Not just one series - it had four.


It wasn't that bad, BUT I've only seen half of the first series.  Almost everyone says that the first series got better after that, and then got REALLY good at the end, and then from the second series on turned into this amazing complex piece of work that, as the consensus has it, will go down as one of the greatest sci-fi TV shows of all time.

Only problem is only about three channels on the whole planet ever showed it.

St_Eddie

Quote from: Shit Good Nose on February 09, 2019, 11:26:15 PM
Not just one series - it had four.


It wasn't that bad, BUT I've only seen half of the first series.  Almost everyone says that the first series got better after that, and then got REALLY good at the end, and then from the second series on turned into this amazing complex piece of work that, as the consensus has it, will go down as one of the greatest sci-fi TV shows of all time.

Only problem is only about three channels on the whole planet ever showed it.

Well now I don't know what to think!

mothman

Just do what I'd do, read the Wikipedia (yes, I know) episode/season synopses, and then get on with your life.

fucking ponderous

No one is going to watch this because no one watches streaming series that aren't on Netflix or Hulu.

Dex Sawash


Always get Time Bandits mixed up with Ice Pirates

olliebean

Quote from: Shit Good Nose on February 09, 2019, 11:26:15 PM
Not just one series - it had four.


It wasn't that bad, BUT I've only seen half of the first series.  Almost everyone says that the first series got better after that, and then got REALLY good at the end, and then from the second series on turned into this amazing complex piece of work that, as the consensus has it, will go down as one of the greatest sci-fi TV shows of all time.

Only problem is only about three channels on the whole planet ever showed it.

To be fair, the first series wasn't bad. But I felt it got mired in its own complexity and bullshit mythology in the 2nd and 3rd, and I couldn't be arsed with the 4th. Felt to me like there was an Emperor's-New-Clothesy aspect to some of the praise it got.

At any rate, the film is definitely better.

greenman

You could argue the basic idea might be well suited to a more conventional series, each episode traveling to a different time period attempting to steal stuff but probably ending up doing something more moral whilst evading evils attempts to steal the map.

mothman

Quote from: fucking ponderous on February 10, 2019, 08:11:24 AM
No one is going to watch this because no one watches streaming series that aren't on Netflix or Hulu.

After it's been cancelled after one half-season, I'm sure E4 will snap it up.

dr_christian_troy

They could legitimately produce a decent Baron Munchhausen television series due to the amount of source material available, although I couldn't think of who would make a good Baron.

The ending of Time Bandits is actually quite horrible, right? The parents are dead and the Time Bandits bugger off and leave the boy on his own. Now that I think about it, I suppose all three of Gilliam's "Ages" trilogy (Time Bandits, Brazil and The Adventures Of Baron Munchhausen are actually incredibly bleak.

Glebe

Meanwhile:

'Gremlins' Animated Series in the Works at WarnerMedia Streaming Service (EXCLUSIVE).

QuoteThe potential series is said to be a period piece that would follow Mr. Wing, the Chinese grandfather played in the films by Keye Luke, as a young man as he goes on adventures with the friendly Mogwai Gizmo.

Hmmm. Doesn't seem like they're putting the kibosh on another movie or anything.

Mister Six

Taika Waititi is doing the adaptation! Okay, now I'm actually hopeful...

QuoteFollowing the box-office and critical success of Thor:Ragnarok, Taika Waititi is currently loading up on upcoming projects with the enthusiasm of Jordan Peele after Get Out or Guillermo del Toro pretty much any time. And today Deadline reports that Waititi—whose TV adaptation of What We Do In The Shadows premieres later this month, who has a new movie called Jojo Rabbit coming out, and who has signed on to direct an episode of Disney +'s The Mandalorian—is throwing another project onto his ever-growing pile: a TV adaptation of Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits for Apple's thus-far-mysterious streaming service.

Waititi has committed to writing and directing a pilot for a series based on Gilliam's appealingly rambling 1981 fantasy-adventure, whose tone, once described by our own William Hughes as "a mixture of bitter cynicism, screwball comedy, and outright wonder," is an ideal match for Waititi's creative sensibilities. (If you haven't seen Hunt For The Wilderpeople yet, please do.) Gilliam himself announced that he was working on a TV version of Time Bandits back in 2015, but given the two helmer's respective batting averages in terms of actually finishing projects, maybe it's for the best that he turned it over to Waititi.

ttps://news.avclub.com/taika-waititi-is-adapting-terry-gilliams-time-bandits-f-1833207401?rev=1552326696777&utm_campaign=SF&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_source=Facebook&utm_content=Main

Rev+

Quote from: dr_christian_troy on February 26, 2019, 03:34:25 PMThe ending of Time Bandits is actually quite horrible, right? The parents are dead and the Time Bandits bugger off and leave the boy on his own. Now that I think about it, I suppose all three of Gilliam's "Ages" trilogy (Time Bandits, Brazil and The Adventures Of Baron Munchhausen are actually incredibly bleak.

Gilliam has explained it as being a happy ending, as Kevin doesn't really need his dreadful parents anymore and will quickly realise that.  Well, alright, but the moment is lonely as fuck.  What always gets me is the neighbours standing about on their lawns to gawp, and none of them approaching him to see if he's okay.  I'm pretty confident we won't be getting that kind of ending in the series.

Waititi being involved is good news, but it does sound like he'll do the pilot to set the tone then largely leave it alone, like Scorsese with Boardwalk Empire.  This absolutely should work, is the thing.  The film itself is episodic, and there's no end of potential for historical shenanigans.  It should work.  It won't work.

St_Eddie


Gulftastic

At the end of the film, Kev's shit parents are dead and the Bandits have buggered off but he has that poloroid of them holding the map. I reckon a couple of years of study, he'll learn how to read it and jump back to ancient Greece.