Doctor Who movie pressing ahead, David Yates directing
Doctor Who may be just years away from returning to the big screen. And Harry Potter helmer David Yates is set to direct it. Details here.
Variety is reporting tonight that a deal has been done to press ahead with a long-mooted Doctor Who movie. It’s a bit of a bolt from the blue, this one, as the last we heard regarding a Who film was when rumours were circulating that Russell T Davies would be involved, with David Tennant starring.
This, however, seems to be a different beast, and a far bigger one.
David Yates, the director of the last four Harry Potter films, has told Variety that he’s now developing a Doctor Who film in conjunction with Jane Tranter at BBC Worldwide. Yates is quoted as saying “we’re looking at writers now. We’re going to take two to three years to get it right. It needs quite a radical transformation to take it into the bigger arena”.
The Variety story confirms that the planned movie will be independent of both Russell T Davies’ and Steven Moffat’s take on Doctor Who, with Yates saying both did versions that were “fantastic”, but that “we have to put that aside and start from scratch”.
That, presumably, rules out David Tenannt and Matt Smith from starring, too. Peter Cushing, sadly, died in 1994, so he’s out, as well.
No further news are known about the story just yet, but this is, surely, the biggest attempt to bring Who to the big screen since the days of Doctor Who And The Daleks and Daleks’ Invasion Earth: 2150AD. With Yates behind the project, this might just happen, too.
There’s been no reaction that we can find from Steven Moffat and Russell T Davies thus far, incidentally. There has also been no official confirmation from the BBC. But the source is Yates himself, and that suggests there might be something to this. The Doctor vs Voldemort, then?
So what do you think? Yates is a British director, and has said he wants to capture a “British sensibility” with the film, but hasn’t ruled out using American writers. And then there’s the casting: who will be the big screen Doctor? Jason Isaacs is our early frontrunner.
Share your thoughts in the comments below, and the Variety story is here.
