Story Details For Terry Gilliam's Bonkers Unproduced TIME BANDITS Sequel

Terry Gilliam’s classic 1981 fantasy adventure film Time Bandits is one of my favorite childhood films. That movie was just so damn fun and completely crazy! Gilliam actually planned a sequel for the film, but unfortunately, that sequel never happened.

The filmmaker collaborated on a script with Charles McKeown back in 1996, and the plan was to bring back the original cast, except for David Rappaport and Tiny Ross, who had died a few years earlier. At the time, Jack Purvis had been paralyzed in a car accident, so his character was written to be in a similar state. It was when Purvis passed away that the project was shelved.

There were a couple of drafts of the script that were written, and this sequel would have been totally bonkers! It was even crazier than the original film and I would have loved to see it get made!

The plot involved saving the world from God’s wrath on the millennium. Gilliam explained in the past, “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 [the year] 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. And there were going to be new Time Bandits, the daughters of the old guys who have worked their way up through the creation departments and are finally getting equal pay as women. It’s a really good tale.”

Thanks to Filmbuffonline, we have a decent breakdown of the script, which opens with “two dwarves, Mox and her friend Tangle, working in the bureaucracy that runs all of Creation, shredding files on animals as they become extinct. They are extremely busy and the two overhear a conversation between the Supreme Being and his Supreme Opposite Number who are planning to turn off creation at the end of the millennium. Mox decides she and Tangle need to hunt out her father Strutter, one of the original Time Bandits, to see if he has any suggestions on how to stop this from happening. 

“They find the Time Bandits out of work and scrounging for a living. Strutter (Malcolm Dixon) is joined by Fidgit (Kenny Baker) and Og (Mike Edmonds) and Og’s son Tubby. Another former time bandit, Wally (Jack Purvis) is despised by the group as he has moved into Creation’s Upper Management and is in charge of the Accounting Department.

“The group decides they need to see exactly how creation was saved from being shut off at the end of the first millennium in order to save it this time around. They go to the Supreme Being’s Treasury, steal a key from Wally and get the map that the Bandits used in the first film. While rummaging arounf in the treasury, they accidentally knock over the Ark of the Covenant (Which McKeown notes should look like the one in Raiders Of The Lost Ark), summoning the guards. Finding some time portals (lying in a stack like panes of glass), the group make their escape into history.

“The group’s first stop is the bedroom of Polly, an 11-year-old American girl, who spends more time in Internet chat rooms than with her working mother or stay at home, laid off father. With the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse hot on their trail, the bandits and Polly set off through history on a trip similar to the first film. They encounter a cleanliness obsessed pirate captain, inadvertently participate in Joan of Arc’s capture and discover that Julius Caesar’s assassination was faked so he could get away from his shrewish wife Calpurnia.

“Finally the Bandits discover that they are the ones who saved Creation at the end of the first millennium and so they have to try again. Just before the switch to turn off Creation is thrown, the real Supreme Being returns, having been delayed while measuring infinity. The other Supreme Being (the one with the hand puppet) was just his servant who had gone crazy trying to keep things going for his boss. Polly is returned to her bedroom, where her parents wake her just in time for the millennium New Year’s Eve countdown. Downstairs, she meets her mother’s new boss, a man who looks suspiciously like the real Supreme Being.”

That would have been a hell of a film, a sequel I would have loved to see. Over the years reports surfaced that the film would go into development, but then nothing ever happened with it.

The most recent report came from 2018 when it was reported that Time Bandits would be turned into a TV series for Apple TV+. A few years prior to this Gilliams was working on another series and when previously talking about his vision for his series he said, "It’s about a middle-aged New York cop who was once a hero who has grown fat and cynical and is in the middle of a breakdown, ending up in a child’s fantasy world where the rules of the mean streets of New York no longer apply. The best way to kill a dragon is no longer a gun, but a tree branch you think is a sword."

That seems like another great story to follow. It’s very different from his original plans, but I would still love to see the world of Time Bandits explored in some way. It’s just such a wonderfully insane world and it’d be a shame if we never saw any new stories set in it.

We take a deep dive into this film and discuss all kinds of other fun details in our Secret Level podcast. You can listen to the Time Bandits episode below!