Taika Waititi's ‘Time Bandits' Canceled by Apple TV+

As with most streaming platforms, viewing figures for Taika Waititi’s “Time Bandits” weren’t made available. You have to imagine that whatever the viewing numbers were, they weren’t good enough since Apple TV+ has now canceled the show after just a single season. The news comes less than a month after “Time Bandits” completed its 10-episode first season on August 21.

Waitit’s dwarf-less remake of Terry Gilliam’s much-beloved 1983 film received passable reviews from critics. However, not many people were talking about it. The show failed to break into Nielsen’s top 10 original streaming series in the first four weeks of its run.

What disappointed many, even before the series aired, and in a decision ostensibly made in order to not offend, Waititi’s remake didn’t have dwarfs accompanying protagonist Kevin on his adventures, but rather regularly sized individuals.

In Gilliam’s film, Kevin’s height is on par with the Time Bandits themselves — it’s a crucial part of the 1981 classic. Part of the charm of the original are the dwarfs themselves and the interactions they have about the size difference with Kevin. Waititi instead opted to nix this amusing aspect and opt for regularly sized bandits instead.

I don’t understand how this keeps happening in the industry. You could have had five rare acting roles for dwarfs in this series and, instead, to avoid backlash, Waititi decided to replace them with normal sized actors. It makes no sense. Acting jobs are being taken away from dwarfs. Call it “dwarf erasure” or “dwarfism.”

Regardless, the end result is that Waititi’s experiment has failed. I don’t think he’ll lose sleep over it, the man currently has six projects in development and/or in post-production.

Waititi recently wrapped production on his next film, “Klara and the Sun,” an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s sci-fi novel, starring Amy Adams and Jenna Ortega. He also has a “Star Wars” project in the works. Not to mention his live-action remake of “Flash Gordon” and an adaptation of Percival Everett’s “James” for Steven Spielberg’s Amblin. Oh, and there’s two other projects of his (“The Incal” and “Akira”) that might or might not be happening as there hasn’t been much of an update on them.