David Yates Confirms Doctor Who Movie

Before anyone gets too excited or angry, this news has not been confirmed officially yet, though is clearly not just like the usual flow of tabloid 'rumours'.

After years and years of tabloids and fans setting numerous false rumours about a supposed Doctor Who movie, we finally have a confirmation, which has come from somebody I’m sure nobody expected the announcement from, let alone the announcement itself. David Yates – who many of you I’m sure will know as the director of the final four Harry Potter films – has confirmed that he is working with Jane Tranter at BBC Worldwide to produce the feature-length film, which he will be the director of.

“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 planned movie will be independent of both the Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat’s eras of the TV series, while Yates described them as “fantastic” but said “we have to put that aside and start from scratch”.

"The notion of the time-travelling Time Lord is such a strong one, because you can express story and drama in any dimension or time," Yates said, and added, "We want a British sensibility, but having said that, Steve Kloves wrote the Potter films and captured that British sensibility perfectly, so we are looking at American writers too."


The move to “start from scratch” seems to have fired up some dark corners of Twitter, as some are already complaining about the move. In fact, the only two previous Doctor Who feature-films released were also very separate from the television episodes. My argument would be, don’t judge the film years before you’ll even see it, and especially do not judge whether it will be good or not on the miniscule, pretty non-existent information we have been given.

I think everyone should keep in mind exactly what Paul Cornell (Dr Who writer) has ‘voiced’ on Twitter:

Paul_Cornell – @Paul_Cornell
All we know about the Doctor Who movie is contained in this sentence. Apart from: that's a great director. There.

Harry Potter fans – or “Potterheads” as some might say – will know that Yates directed the final four Potter films in the franchise, ending last July with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (pictured above directing the main trio for a scene in DH Part 1). If anyone is of a similar mind to me, then they’ll no doubt agree that Yates did a marvellous job with those films, which I personally believe he can bring to a new Doctor Who film. Also, to those who are (to say the least) sceptical about it being set “from scratch”, however much we might like to see one of our favourite Doctors on the big screen, it only makes sense to get a new actor for the part in a film because of the massive differences between the mediums of film and TV.

What are your thoughts on this news? Are you… EXCITED, ANNOYED?
Please comment.