12 Monkeys director Terry Gilliam brands upcoming SyFy pilot ‘a very dumb idea’

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Back in July we heard that SyFy was looking to turn Terry Gilliam's 1995 classic 12 MONKEYS into a TV series with the pilot finally getting the greenlight late last month with Universal Cable Productions and Atlas Productions (who produced the original film) onboard to produce. While the news was not well received by many fans, it certainly didn't go over well with Terry Gilliam himself, who recently responded to the news surrounding the 12 MONKEYS pilot in an interview with Screen Daily.

Gilliam, who is not involved in the project, told ScreenDaily:

“I know nothing about that. That’s just ridiculous. It doesn’t have anything to do with me and no-one has contacted me.”

Asked his thoughts on a TV spin-off, he added:

“It’s a very dumb idea. That’s what I think. If it was going to be any good it would have to be written by David and Janet Peoples, who wrote the film, otherwise it would just be another version of Time Bandits.”

For those who may be unaware, TIME BANDITS was Gilliam’s 1981 feature about a boy who joins a band of dwarves as they jump through time looking for treasure to steal. And while I'm not big on the idea of seeing one of my favorite films turned into a SyFy original series, I'm going to reserve judgment til I see it. But yeah…it's probably a dumb idea.

12 MONKEYS follows the journey of a time traveler from the post-apocalyptic future who appears in present day on a mission to locate and eradicate the source of a deadly plague that will eventually decimate the human race.

Atlas Entertainment’s Charles Roven and Richard Suckle (Roven was a producer of the film) will executive produce the hour-long pilot, penned by Terry Matalas and Travis Fickett, who both worked on Fox sci-fi series "Terra Nova", and production is set to begin in November.