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CO-SHOWRUNNER IAIN MORRIS EXPLAINS HOW HE, JEMAINE CLEMENT AND TAIKA WAITITI BREATHED NEW LIFE INTO TIME BANDITS

- TARA BENNETT

GEN XERS GREW UP WITH SOME REALLY bizarre and dark films aimed right at their unsuspecting kid brains. There was a veritable smorgasbord of titles that caused nightmares and My First Existential Spiral, including Watership Down (1978), Gremlins (1984) and writer/director Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits (1981). Co-written with fellow Python Michael Palin, Time Bandits was an original story about 11-year-old schoolboy Kevin (Craig Warnock), an egghead obsessed with history and saddled with self-absorbed parents. When a gang of dwarves spill out of his bedroom wardrobe, Kevin discovers that his room is a time portal and he’s compelled to follow them through time as they run from a giant, terrifying, disembodied head (Ralph Richardson) that's laying chase. See? Beyond weird.

Stacked with incredible actors like Sean Connery, Ian Holm and Shelley Duvall, Time Bandits was a critical and box office success that continues to rank in all-time lists of the best children’s films and time travel films. There’s been no sequel, so current generations have no idea how much this film both scarred their parents, and helped them to develop their cinematic taste. That being the case, bless Jemaine Clement (Flight Of The Conchords), Taika Waititi (What We Do In The Shadows) and Iain Morris (The Inbetweeners) for reimagining this strange premise for today’s kids (and their families) as a 10-episode Apple TV+ series.

A long-time collaborator with Clement and Waititi, co-showrunner Morris tells SFX that the idea to revisit Time Bandits as a streaming series came from production companies Anonymous Content, MRC Television and HandMade Films (who made the original). Knowing they needed a filmmaker who could retain the source work’s quirky tone and direct young actors, Waititi was approached. He then called Clement, who called Morris.