Taika Waititi had a big hit in 2017 with Thor: Ragnarok, a movie that could have been a somber slog but that in Waititi’s hands transformed into a trippy action comedy featuring Jeff Goldblum with a silver-blue soul patch. Since then, Waititi has been an explosion of activity; his horror-comedy What We Do In the Shadows premieres on FX this month, his movie Jojo Rabbit (costarring himself as Adolf Hitler) is out this year, Disney tapped him to direct some episodes of its live-action Star Wars series The Mandalorian, and now, Deadline reports that he’ll be adapting Terry Gilliam’s 1981 Phantasmagoria Time Bandits for TV. Everything’s coming up Waititi!
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If you haven’t seen it, Time Bandits is a good fit for Waititi’s offbeat sensibilities. It’s a time travel comedy that hits ancient Greece and the Napoleonic Wars, and at one point God shows up. It’s funny, it’s weird, it’s cynical, it’s hopeful…maybe I should just let the trailer speak for itself:
That is one British trailer.
Anyway, Waititi is making the Time Bandits show for Apple’s upcoming streaming service, which we still don’t know much about. In the meantime, you can look for his work on The Mandalorian, which stars Game of Thrones slum Pedro Pascal in the lead role of a lone gunfighter on the far reaches of the galaxy. Per an interview he gave to The Observer at SXSW, security on The Mandalorian is “easily” tighter than it is directing a Marvel movie. Then again, he wasn’t working on Avengers: Endgame.
Waititi also talked about the balancing act of working on a show set in the Star Wars universe:
"There’s definitely some of the stuff I’ve learned over the years from working with [What We Do In The Shadows producers producers Jemaine Clement and Paul Simms] and everyone else back home that I have brought to my episode. But I can’t… It’s a very sacred universe, the Star Wars universe, so I can’t do too much of it…I gotta check. Sometimes they’ll say, ‘You’ve driven the Marvel truck out of the land and off the freeway and you gotta come back now.’"
The Mandalorian will premiere sometime this year on Disney+, the studio’s upcoming streaming service; everyone has one these days.
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h/t /Film, The A.V. Club