A new stage show will see all surviving members of Monty Python; John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, Eric Idle and Michael Palin team up again.
Monty Python’s original members are set to reunite, more than 30 years after the comedy troupe last worked together.
The five surviving members have revealed that they have spent months locked in secret talks about getting the Flying Circus back on the road.
The reunion comes after several failed attempts to reform. But the surviving members are said to have realised ‘it was now or never,’ and have decided to embark upon ‘a fully-fledged reunion.’
It is thought that the Pythons will perform live again, allowing for development of a new film or TV show. But it it not yet known if they will be performing old or new material or both.
With all five members now in their seventies, and with a combined age of 357 years, 30 years have passed since the Pythons last appeared together in The Meaning of Life.
Hopes of a reunion were dashed after sixth member, Graham Chapman, died in 1989 from cancer and the other Pythons have been pursuing solo projects since the early 1980s.
Certain joint projects have brought some of the Pythons back together. In 1996, Jones, Idle, Cleese and Palin starred in Jones’s film adaptation of The Wind in the Willows. Gilliam was considered to voice the part of the river.
Spamalot, the West End show “lovingly ripped off” from the group’s 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, saw some members briefly appear together on stage in 1998, though a full Monty Python reunion had previously looked unlikely.