Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement Have a Plan for ‘Time Bandits’ Season 2

[Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for Time Bandits.]

The big picture

• The Apple TV+ series “Time Bandits” follows a time-traveling gang of thieves alongside an 11-year-old history buff who helps them save the world.
• The Supreme Being, played by Taika Waititi, wants to erase everything on Earth, while Pure Evil, played by Jemaine Clement, enjoys wreaking havoc.
• Co-creators Waititi and Clement collaborate on the series, focusing on sets and practical effects, and are currently planning a potential second season.

Adapted from the beloved cult classic film and created for television by Jemaine Clement, Italian:Iain Morris AND Taika Waititithe Apple TV+ original series Time Bandits is an adventure that follows a motley crew of thieves as they travel through time and space, and accidentally cross paths with an 11-year-old history buff (Kal-El Tuck). Penelope (Lisa Kudrow), High (Taddeo Murphy), Widgets (Roger Jean Nsengiyumva), Bitter (Rune Temte) and Judy (My life is beautiful) have done well on their own, making their way through worlds of the distant past and collecting treasures along the way. But with Kevin’s knowledge and the help he’s gotten them out of some sticky situations, they agree to help him save his parents while also trying to save the world from evil.

As the Time Bandits travel to different eras in time, the Supreme Being (Waititi), who is essentially God, wants to erase everything on Earth and start over while Pure Evil (Clement) has fun wreaking havoc and causing all sorts of mischief. During this interview with Collider, Waititi and Clement talked about why they wanted to take on this project together, wanting to use sets and practical effects when possible, how they ended up playing characters as well, and that they’re already working on figuring out what Season 2 will be like, if the series goes forward.

Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement Didn’t Want the TV Series “Time Bandits” to Be a Carbon Copy of the Movie

Collider: When you had the chance to reinvent all of this, you decided to make it a collaboration. Why was this the perfect project to do together? What was it that you found so appealing about it?

TAIKA WAITITI: I love working with Jemaine [Clement]. He’s my best friend. We’ve done a lot of things together. And we’ve done them with Iain Morris, another good friend of ours. We’re all about the same age. We grew up with Monty Python and all these other great British and American comedies. Our sensibilities are all very similar. We worked a lot on [What We Do in the] Shadowsthe movie and also the TV show. Apple and Paramount said, “Do you want to adapt this into a show?” and they were the first people I thought of. We just collaborated in that way. It was such an honor to be asked to do it in the first place. From the very beginning, we decided not to try to make a carbon copy of the film because this exists as a standalone thing for those fans. and I wanted to reinvent it a little bit and put it in a slightly more modern context. The original was pretty dark, but this version is probably a little more accessible for families in 2024.

Jemaine, when Taika proposed a project to you, and in particular when he proposed this project to you, did you immediately get interested?

JEMAINE CLEMENT: Yeah, I was. Sometimes I think about it a little bit. Sometimes there’s a, “Who is it with? No, definitely not. I don’t want to work with them anymore.” But this was in the same conversation, where I said, “Yeah, I will. I would love to do it.” It’s very flattering to be looked at in that light, not that we’re the same people, but to do something that we consider a classic.

Taika, you’ve worked on some very big budget films, but this is the biggest thing you’ve done together. Was there anything you learned from those big budget films that worked to your advantage and translated into being able to get what you wanted out of this TV series?

WAITITI: The sets, all the environments, all the visual effects were really, really well done. We did a lot of stuff with miniatures and puppets. We made some practical constructions of things to try to do things in cameraif we could. It’s also a completely different guest cast in every episode, in a different country and in a different year. The scale is really big and it feels like an epic movie, episode after episode. That stuff takes care of itself, budget-wise, if you have a good line producer who knows how to allocate funds and schedule things so that when you’re hitting one set, you’re moving to another to shoot. You’re checking out these new builds every day, which is really exciting to see. Other than that, at the end of the day, whatever the budget is, you’re still desperate to fit people into a rectangle and make it the best you can.

CLEMENT: And no matter how good you make it look, people identify with the characters and the actors and the lines. But it was fun to make a big adventure.

With a TV series, directing the first episode or the first couple of episodes, you usually want to set everything up, so it makes the rest of the season easier. But you didn’t feel like you had that with this show because with every episode you do, you’re in different places and it’s like doing a first episode all over again.

CLEMENT: Yeah, it’s always a different place. We were always apologizing to the crew and saying, “Sorry, you have to create a whole new place in 10 days.” But they loved it. They said, “That’s why we make movies, to create new worlds.” It was a pleasure to be able to do it so many times, instead of doing the same thing over and over again.

Playing the Supreme Being and Pure Evil in “Time Bandits” was not part of Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s original plan

What is it like to be in a position where you can call yourself and others Supreme Beings and Pure Evil? Did you know right away which of you would be what?

CLEMENT: No, we were hoping for better actors.

WAITITI: We were hoping we wouldn’t have to be in it. It’s a lot of work to make the show, and having to add that extra stress of playing a character was maybe too much.

CLEMENT: But then we couldn’t find anyone.

WAITITI: Even with this big budget, we were the cheapest local actors we could find.

CLEMENT: Otherwise, we wouldn’t be on the show so much and we’d have to ask people to come all the way to New Zealand to shoot for a day, here and there. It wasn’t convenient and we were always on the road. Initially, we were going to play the other parts because I feel like Taika is typecast as this wacky inventor and I’m often the bad guy. But then, we went and played our types that we usually play and had fun doing that. I loved Evil Genius, as he’s called in the movie, and I loved David Warner when I saw the movie, so it was exciting to create that world. Once I realized that was me, I added the creatures to the script. We had medieval drawings and we based some of the demons on those. My son was about 12, about Kevin’s age at the time, so we had him draw a demon and we built a creature based on my son’s drawing. It was just fun to build those worlds and be a part of them.

Otherwise you wouldn’t have been able to wear that awesome skull cap or spend time in the Fortress of Darkness.

CLEMENT: It smelled like spray paint, but it was really good.

How did you figure out what kind of headdress it should be, so that it wasn’t too heavy?

CLEMENT: It wasn’t that heavy, but it’s a tribute to the amazing costume design in the original film. We didn’t know that at the time, our costume designer is friends with the costume designer from the 80’s moviewho actually lives in Wellington as well. And his daughter worked on the set, but we never realised that her father was this legendary costume designer. It’s all a reference to the movie, which I’ve actually seen copied in other things, with that ridiculous headpiece that he had. There’s a few different ones. I’ve had a few costume changes in different episodes.

Was the Supreme Being required to wear a bathrobe?

WAITITI: It was very comfortable. The older I get, or the lazier I get, the more comfortable I want my costumes to be. If I had my way, from now on I would just wear a nice bathrobe for everything I do.

CLEMENT: We are both in cassocks. Our costumes are both cassocks.

What do you think is the strangest thing you’ve done in all of this, that you would never have convinced anyone if you hadn’t been yourself?

CLEMENT: Well, you couldn’t convince people to give us millions and millions of dollars to do something. For me, creating the creatures in the Fortress of Darkness was a bit of a dream. That kind of thing is so much fun.

WAITITI: Everything about the Ice Age.

CLEMENT: When he was a kid, he built cardboard armatures, but now he can ask people to build him real metal ones.

WAITITI: When I was a kid, I would cut these things out of cardboard. And then, I threw away the scissors and said, “That’s it! Someday, I’m going to have other people do this for me.” Thirty-five years later, it happened.

CLEMENT: Kevin’s room is a mix of my son’s, who loves historical things, but also has a cardboard suit of armor, a tribute to Taika’s creative endeavors as a child.

Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement Already Know What ‘Time Bandits’ Season 2 Will Be Like

Of course, this series could continue and you could do more seasons. Is that the goal? Do you have a plan for season 2 and beyond?

WAIT: We are planning a second season. It depends on whether people watch it and like it, and whether it’s worth it financially for Apple to make another one. We’ll find out in a couple of months. But we’re writing it right now, and yeah, there’s more locations and more characters and more guest stars and more costumes and all that stuff.

Time Bandits is available to stream on Apple TV+. Watch the trailer:

Watch on Apple TV+