The Taiki Waititi remake of Terry Gilliam’s beloved Time Bandits won’t be returning, with poor viewing figures being the likely culprit.
When Apple TV+ first announced that it was making a fantasy series –Time Bandits – based on the 1981 Terry Gilliam film of the same name, it sounded like a clever idea, not least because of the talent involved. It was created by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi (who would also appear in the series) as well as Iain Morris, best known as the co-creator of The Inbetweeners.
Apple didn’t skimp on the budget either (does it ever?) with all of those dollars definitely showing up on the screen. High production values meant impressive lighting and special effects and we’ll bet Mr Waititi didn’t come cheap either. According to The Hollywood Reporter though, none of that was enough to tempt audiences in the numbers that Apple was hoping for, and as such, the show has been cancelled after a single season.
Clement and Waititi had publicly confirmed that they were working on writing a second season, with the caveat being that audience numbers had to be acceptable. That doesn’t appear to have happened. We don’t have any official figures, but the show never entered the Nielsen’s top 10 original streaming series in the first four weeks of its run.
Critically, it performed pretty well, but the problem for Apple – both on the big screen and the small – continues to be to get viewers to actually care about the films and television that sit on its platform. It’s spending lots of money on big name talent such as Waititi, Ridley Scott (Napoleon) or Martin Scorsese (Killers Of The Flower Moon) but without producing that ‘killer title’ that draws audiences onto their service in the way that Netflix managed in its early days with House of Cards, or Amazon has with The Boys.
The news of Time Bandits’ cancellation comes on the heels of Apple’s announcement that most of its films will skip cinema releases, mainly because they aren’t performing well in multiplexes. The company might be able to sell more iPhones than we’ve had hot dinners, but when it comes to figuring out the streaming industry, Apple is still a work in progress.
