Looks like the world will collectively get to sing “The Lumberjack Song” again. British comedy ensemble Monty Python, who is reuniting its surviving members for a handful of performances at London’s O2 arena later this year, will film the final performance on July 20, 2014 for worldwide theatrical distribution.

The show is entitled The Last Night of Monty Python and it’s being tagged as a farewell to the comedy troupe, asking fans and filmgoers around the globe to “join the crowd live from London’s 02 Arena in a final, weepy, hilarious, uproarious, outrageous, farewell to the five remaining Python’s (sixth original member Graham Chapman died in 1989) as they head to the Old Jokes Home, on the big screen, in HD” as per a statement released by the Pythons in their glorious usual irreverent manner.

And the upcoming shows and film will be no different. Anticipation is at fever pitch as the live shows sold out pretty much instantaneously and there will be live broadcasts to almost 500 cinemas in the UK alone, and 1,500 screens will round out the exhibition globally.

The statement also went on to say that “thanks to the wonderful invention of motion pictures, The Last Night of Monty Python is coming to a cinema near you.” Then making a not-so-sly reference to their popular hapless Gumby character, the statement went on to say that fans should “get their knotted handkerchiefs out and warm their brains one last time.”

The shows will be directed by Aubrey Powell and will feature the Pythons, who are now pretty much in their seventies, but still with the same comedy furnace on full blast energy which made them legends as a group and on their own with dazzlingly successful solo careers, in a mix of performing their greatest hits with some modern, typical Pythonesque twists.

The last time the troupe appeared on screen together was in 1983’s The Meaning of Life.

[Source: Variety]