“God isn’t interested in technology,” Evil observed in Terry Gilliam’s cult film Time Bandits. “He knows nothing of the potential of the microchip or the silicon revolution. If I were creating a world, I wouldn’t mess about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers, eight o’clock, day one!” 38 years after George Harrison’s Handmade Films released Time Bandits to big screens, Apple announced it will adapt it into a television series, according to Deadline.
Released in 1981, Time Bandits was the first film in Gilliam’s “Trilogy of Imagination,” which included Brazil in 1985 and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, which came out in 1988.” The fantasy was co-written and directed by Gilliam, the former animator of Monty Python who also made Meaning of Life, 12 Monkeys, the underappreciated Tideland, The Fisher King and his latest film, the beleaguered The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Gilliam will not direct the series, but will be a non-writing executive producer, alongside Anonymous and MRC.
Time Bandits follows an 11-year-old boy named Kevin, played by Craig Warnock, as he’s chased by the Supreme Being for unwittingly helping a group of six time-traveling dwarves who are ripping off historical luminaries. The film co-starred John Cleese as Robin Hood, Ian Holm as Napoleon Bonaparte, Sean Connery as King Agamemnon, Shelly Duvall, Ralph Richardson, Katherine Helmond, Michael Palin, Peter Vaughn and David Warner. Made for $5 million, it pulled in $42 million at the box office.
Handmade Films was a small production company former Beatles guitarist Harrison formed with Denis O’Brien to fund the 1979 Monty Python film Life of Brian, which was directed by Python’s Terry Jones. The company also made Mona Lisa, Withnail & I, Shanghai Surprise and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, before it was disbanded.
Apple, not to be confused with The Beatles’ Apple Corps, or their Apple Computer or Apple Film companies, will also stream an original TV series based on Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, relaunch Steven Spielberg’s 1980s sci-fi anthology series Amazing Stories, and develop the sci-fi series See with Battlestar Galactica‘s Ronald D. Moore.
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