TIME BANDITS May Be Remade as Family-Friendly Franchise

Last September, we reported the sad news that financing had once again fallen apart on Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and that the director was considering a 3D version of Time Bandits.  At the time, it sounded like he was going to do a post-converted version, but now it sounds like the 1981 cult classic is being remade as family-friendly action film.  Variety reports that producers Guy Collins and Michael Ryan are in talks with an unnamed Hollywood co-producer to reboot Time Bandits into an action franchise.  It’s unknown if Gilliam would be involved with this reboot or if his plans for Time Bandits is to simply give it a 3D post-conversion.

While I think Time Bandits could work as a kids action franchise, it sounds like it will lose all the delightful strangeness that made the original movie work so well.  For those unfamiliar with Time Bandits, hit the jump to check out a trailer and the synopsis.

Here’s the synopsis for Time Bandits:

Young Kevins daydreams burst into astonishing and hilarious life when a band of time-traveling little men come crashing through his bedroom wardrobe and carry him off on an unbelievable crime spree, weaving through the greatest and strangest moments of history. The pint-sized plunderers filch from a neurotic Napoleon (Ian Holm), a dim-witted Robin Hood (John Cleese) and a heroic King Agamemnon (Sean Connery), leading to a showdown with the dark forces of Evil (David Warner)…all while keeping just one precarious step ahead of the wrath of The Supreme Being himself!  Producer/Director/Co-writer Terry Gilliam (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Brazil) teams with many of his comic-genius cohorts from Monty Python to bring this laugh-out-loud modern fairy tale-adventure to life. [Amazon]

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