Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits is one of the stranger, darker children’s films ever made, so obviously it would work better as a “kids’ action franchise” with all that stuff taken out. Buried in this Variety report about producers Guy Collins, Michael Ryan and Fred Hedman turning the 1980 British gangster film The Long Good Friday into a TV series is the news that they’re also in talks with another, unnamed Hollywood producer about taking Gilliam’s story of plucky dwarves pillaging their way through time and, yes, “rebooting” it as a more family-friendly series of movies. (It's sort of an ironic play on the film's tagline, "They didn't make history—they stole it.") That’s all the details there are so far, and noticeably absent from the report is any suggestion that Gilliam himself would be involved—although the director had mentioned prepping a converted 3-D version of his 1981 cult classic shortly after The Man Who Killed Don Quixote fell apart for the final time. Of course, given his unfortunate record of late, Gilliam’s involvement would likely mean that this film wouldn’t happen either, so we’re not really sure what to root for here. [via Collider]
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