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

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

The Big Picture

• The Apple TV+ series ‘Time Bandits’ follows a band of thieves traveling through time with an 11-year-old history buff helping them save the world.
• Supreme Being, played by Taika Waititi, wants to erase everything on Earth, while Pure Evil, played by Jemaine Clement, has fun wreaking havoc.
• Co-creators Waititi and Clement collaborate on the series, focusing on practical sets and effects, and are currently planning out a potential Season 2.

Adapted from the beloved cult classic movie and created for television by Jemaine Clement, Iain Morris and Taika Waititi, the Apple TV+ original series Time Bandits is an adventure following a ragtag group of thieves traveling through time and space, who happen to cross paths with 11-year-old history buff (Kal-El Tuck). Penelope (Lisa Kudrow), Alto (Tadhg Murphy), Widgit (Roger Jean Nsengiyumva), Bittelig (Rune Temte) and Judy (Charlyne Yi) have been fine on their own, making their way through worlds of the distant past and collecting treasure along the way. But with Kevin’s knowledge and help getting them out of some dicey situations, they agree to help him save his parents as they also attempt to save the world from evil.

While the Time Bandits are traveling to different eras throughout 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 manner of mischief. During this interview with Collider, Waititi and Clement talked about why they wanted to take on this project together, wanting to use practical sets and effects when possible, how they ended up also playing characters, and that they’re already working on figuring out what Season 2 would be, if the series moves forward.

Taika Waititi & Jemaine Clement Didn’t Want The ‘Time Bandits’ TV Series To Be a Carbon Copy of the Film

Collider: When the possibility of reimagining this came your way, you decided to make it a collaboration. Why was this the perfect project for you guys to do together? What did you mutually find so appealing?

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

Jemaine, when Taika brings a project to you, and specifically when he brought this project to you, were you immediately interested?

JEMAINE CLEMENT: Yeah, I was. Sometimes, I’ll have a bit of a think about it. Sometimes there’s a, “Who’s it with? No, definitely not. I never wanna work with them again.” But this one was in the same conversation, where I said, “Yes, I’ll do that. I’d love to do that.” It’s very flattering to be thought of in that light, not that we are the same people, but to do something that we consider a classic.

Taika, you’ve worked on very large budget movies, but this is the biggest thing you guys have done together. Was there anything that you had learned from doing those big-budget movies that worked to your advantage and translated to be able to get what you wanted from this TV series?

WAITITI: The sets, all the environments, and all the VFX stuff was really, really well done. We did a lot of stuff with miniatures and puppets. We did practical builds of stuff to try to do things in camera, if we could. It’s also a completely different guest cast in each episode, in a different country and in a different year. The scale is really big and it feels like an epic film, episode to episode. That stuff takes care of itself, in terms of budgeting things, if you have a good line producer who knows how to allocate the funds and schedule things so that when you’re striking one set, you’re moving to another one to shoot. You’re checking in every day on these new builds, which is really exciting to see. Apart from that, at the end of the day, whatever the budget, you’re still desperate to put people inside a rectangle and make it as good as possible.

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

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

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

Playing Supreme Being and Pure Evil in ‘Time Bandits’ Wasn’t Part of the Original Plan for Taika Waititi & Jemaine Clement

What is it like to be in a position where you can call yourselves and each other Supreme Being and Pure Evil? Did you immediately know which one of you was going to be which?

CLEMENT: No, we were hoping for better actors.

WAITITI: We were hoping that we wouldn’t have to be in this. It’s just such a big job making the show, and to have to add that extra stress of then playing a character was maybe too much.

CLEMENT: But then, we couldn’t find anyone.

WAITITI: Even on this big budget, we were the most affordable local actors that we could find.

CLEMENT: Otherwise, we’re not in the show that much and we’d have to ask people to come all the way to New Zealand to shoot for a day, here and there. That wasn’t cost-effective, and we were always around. Originally, we were gonna play the other parts because I feel like Taika is typecast as a 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 knew it was me, I added the creatures into the script. We had medieval drawings and we based some of the demons on that. 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 to be in it.

Otherwise, you wouldn’t have had that fantastic skull headdress to wear or the Fortress of Darkness to get to hang out in.

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

What was it like to figure out what that headdress would be. so that it wasn’t too heavy?

CLEMENT: It wasn’t that heavy, but that’s a nod to the amazing costume design in the original movie. We didn’t know, at the time, that our costume designer is friends with the costume designer from the eighties’ movie, who actually lives in Wellington too. And his daughter worked on set, but we never realized that her dad was this legendary costume designer. It’s all referencing the movie, which I actually have seen copied in other things, as well, with that ridiculous headdress that he had. There are a few different ones. I had a few costume changes in different episodes.

Was it a requirement for Supreme Being that you got to wear a bathrobe?

WAITITI: It was very comfortable. The older I’m getting, or the lazier I’m getting, the more comfortable I want my costumes to be. If I could have it my way, I’d just have a nice bathrobe for everything I do from now on.

CLEMENT: We’re both in robes. Our costumes are both robes.

What would you say is the weirdest thing you’ve got to do with this, that you wouldn’t have ever gotten anyone to agree to, if you weren’t who you are?

CLEMENT: Well, you wouldn’t get people to give us millions and millions of dollars to do anything. For me, making the creatures in the Fortress of Darkness was a bit of a dream. Those kinds of things are so fun.

WAITITI: All the stuff in the Ice Age.

CLEMENT: When he was a kid, he would make armor out of cardboard, but now he can get people to make armor for him out of real metal.

WAITITI: When I was a kid, I used to cut together these things out of cardboard. And then, I threw down my scissors and said, “Enough! One day, I’ll make other people do this for me.” Thirty-five years later, it happened.

CLEMENT: Kevin’s room is a mixture of my son’s room, who loves historical things, but it does have a cardboard suit of armor, in reference to Taika’s creative efforts as a child.

Taika Waititi & Jemaine Clement Already Know What Season 2 of ‘Time Bandits’ Would Be

Clearly, this series could continue, and you could do more seasons. Is that the goal? Do you have a plan for Season 2, and even beyond Season 2?

WAITITI: We’re mapping out a Season 2. It depends on whether people watch it and like it, and whether it’s financially worth it for Apple to make another one. We’ll know a couple of months into it. But we are writing it at the moment, and yeah, there are more places and more characters and more guest stars and more costumes and all those things.

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

Watch on Apple TV+