Terry Jones, the Python who oversaw Life of Brian, to direct 'sci-fi farce' in which remaining comics voice a group of aliens
Full Monty … the remaining Pythons in 2009 (l-r): Michael Palin, John Cleese, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam and Eric Idle. Photograph: Peter Foley/EPA
The Monty Python team is set to reunite for the cinema screen for the first time since 1983, according to a report in Variety magazine.
Terry Jones, director of Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life, as well as co-director (with Terry Gilliam) of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, is to helm a "sci-fi farce" called Absolutely Anything. The other Pythons are being lined up to voice the roles of a group of aliens who endow an earthling with the power to do "absolutely anything".
Sporadic attempts at a Python film reunion have been made since their cinema career as a group ended. All surviving Pythons bar Eric Idle participated in the recent A Liar's Autobiography, an adaptation of the book by former Python Graham Chapman, who died in 1989, and his long-term partner, David Sherlock.
But in a recent interview for the Guardian, Terry Gilliam cast doubt on whether a reunion would ever be successfully achieved. "We all have our own careers now … the BBC put us on 10 years ago, and it was an hour of mediocrity … the work wasn't what it should be."
Jones's directorial career hit the buffers after 1996's The Wind in the Willows with Steve Coogan; he was reportedly upset at its treatment by its distributors in the UK and US and decided to concentrate on TV, writing and opera instead.
