The five living members of the extraordinarily influential British sketch troupe Monty Python are reuniting for a stage show. Python Terry Jones confirmed to the BBC that he, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin are getting together to put on a show. “It’s real,†Jones said. “I’m quite excited about it. I hope it makes us a lot of money. I hope to be able to pay off my mortgage!â€
More details will be revealed a press conference in London on Thursday, which Idle has referred to in tweets as a “big forthcoming news event.†The group hasn’t performed on stage together in 15 years; the last time they were all together was at the Aspen Comedy Festival in 1998. The sixth member of Python, Graham Chapman, passed away in 1989.
Cleese, Gilliam, Palin, and Jones have worked together more recently, providing voices for the animated autobiography of Graham Chapman and working together on Jones’s Absolutely Anything. Idle, meanwhile, wrote the hit musical Monty Python’s Spamalot.