Whatever happened to Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits sequel?

If you're a child of the 1980s, you'll likely have fond memories of Time Bandits. Monty Python star Terry Gilliam's family-focused fantasy tale was a box office hit in 1981 with its story of a boy taken on a journey through history by a group of time-travelling thieves.

It has taken a long time for any sort of follow-up to arrive. Only now, more than 40 years later, is a TV version of Time Bandits heading on over to Apple TV+. That series has real comedy pedigree behind it as a creation of Taika Waititi, Flight of the Conchords star Jemaine Clement, and The Inbetweeners co-creator Iain Morris.

But there was a time that it was going to be Gilliam who shepherded more Time Bandits to the screen in the form of a direct movie sequel. It never happened and it's now unlikely to see the light of day. But why did it never get made?

In the immediate aftermath of Time Bandits' success with audiences and critics — though famous duo Siskel and Ebert weren't fans — Gilliam leveraged that clout to make the movies he wanted to make. He had been trying to get his oddball dystopian comedy Brazil made even before Time Bandits, so he took the opportunity.

Brazil struggled financially at the US box office and Gilliam's next film, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, was a true bomb. This is despite a handful of Oscar nominations and some strong critical reviews. By the end of the 1980s, Gilliam had begun work on the movie that would become the notoriously chaotic The Man Who Killed Don Quixote — a film he wouldn't get released until 2018.

Read more: Terry Gilliam on Never Compromising in Hollywood: “You Don’t F**k With the Stories” (The Hollywood Reporter)

During the 1980s, though, Gilliam had been approached to continue the Time Bandits story. In a 2023 Q&A reported by Variety, Gilliam explained that he could've made a trilogy. He said: “A couple of years after that success, Warner Bros. came to me and said ‘we would like you to make three Bandit films', and they were offering me millions of dollars. They said: ‘We love the film but there’s only one caveat: No dwarves'. My response was f*** off."

The new Time Bandits TV show has followed this path of not using short actors, with Waititi telling Associated Press he didn't think the show "should be defined because of the presence of little people in it”. Clement said he understood both sides of the debate, saying they juggled "whether it’s right to stereotype little people as magical creatures, and then also whether, by not doing that, you’re cutting out jobs for smaller actors".

Gilliam did, however, work on a script for a Time Bandits sequel with his regular collaborator Charles McKeown during the 1990s. In the 2013 book Very Naughty Boys: The Amazing True Story of HandMade Films, Gilliam revealed some details about what the story might have been, including the introduction of a new generation of female bandits fighting for equal pay.

Read more: Lisa Kudrow in first-look trailer for new adaptation of British cult classic (Digital Spy)

He said: "The plot’s about saving the world from God’s wrath on the millennium. God had bottled out on the first 1,000 years, because he was going to destroy the place, it was a disaster, and now come 2000 he’s finally going to do it. Actually, God is a total schizophrenic at this point, he’s got a devil hand-puppet that he talks to all the time; this was before South Park and the schoolteacher character with his puppet."

Watch: Trailer for the new Apple TV+ take on Time Bandits

Gilliam struggled to get this wildly ambitious idea past any of the studios and, eventually, he decided not to move forward with the film. Original stars David Rappaport and Tiny Ross died in the 1990s and, when one of the most prominent actors Jack Purvis also passed away in 1997, Gilliam opted to abandon his hopes to continue the story.

The director has no creative role on the new Time Bandits series, but the three creators have very much chosen to tread his path and deliver a loyal adaptation for the most part. Gilliam fans, though, will wish the filmmaker had been allowed to bring his unique vision to a sequel of his own.

Time Bandits premieres on 24 July on Apple TV+.