Apple has their beady eyes on the prize as they inch closer to closing a deal for the rights to Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits. Apple’s plan for the story would be to break it down and adapt the story for a new TV series.

It is said that the series will be developed as a co-production between Anonymous Content, Paramount Television and Media Rights Capital. Gilliam will also be involved in the series but only as an executive producer with no involvement in adapting the script.

Also in the news – Josh O’Connor joins Netflix’s The Crown for seasons 3 and 4

Time Bandits has become somewhat of a cult classic over the years. Released in 1981, the British fantasy film was co-written, directed and produced by Gilliam. It also starred his Monty Python cohorts, Michael Palin and John Cleese alongside Sean Connery, Shelley Duvall and Peter Vaughn. It follows the time-travelling adventures of an 11-year-old history buff named Kevin who, one night, stumbles on six dwarfs who emerge from his closet. They are former workers of the Supreme Being who has stolen a map that charts all the holes in the space-time fabric, using it to hop from one historical era to the next in order to steal riches.

Gilliam has previously stated that Time Bandits was the first in his Trilogy of Imagination, followed by Brazil (1985) and ending with The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988). All are about the craziness of our awkwardly ordered society and the desire to escape it through whatever means possible. All three films focus on these struggles and attempts to escape them through imagination: Time Bandits through the eyes of a child, Brazil through the eyes of a man in his thirties, and Munchausen through the eyes of an elderly man.