Harry Potter Director and Jane Tranter to Bring Doctor Who to the Big Screen?

It's that time again... Yep, news of a Doctor Who movie is abound again. Though this time the source is coming from Variety. Today the entertainment industry paper has broken the news that director David Yates is working with Jane Tranter of BBC Worldwide to bring the Time Lord to the big screen.

They are looking for writers for the project currently and their sights are not limited to just the UK.

Unfortunately, as I had always feared when this topic comes up as often as it does, the movie would not be in sync with the established television canon (then again, the television series itself is often not in sync with its own canon, but that's another story). Yates who has directed the last four Harry Potter films told Variety, "Russell T. Davies and then Steven Moffat have done their own transformations, which were fantastic, but we have to put that aside and start from scratch."

Let's hope they don't rename the Doctor character to "Dr. Who" like the two feature films of the 1960s did starring Peter Cushing.

There have been other efforts to bring Doctor Who to the big screen before since the Cushing films, none of them have been successful in doing so. With Tranter and Yates working on this project, it may see its way. Though with the current state of the movie industry, I think I would rather it simply stay as a television series where I believe it works best. With that said, I wish only the very best for the project.

""Harry Potter" director David Yates is teaming up with the BBC to turn its iconic sci-fi TV series "Doctor Who" into a bigscreen franchise.

Yates, who directed the last four Potter films, told Daily Variety that he is about to start work on developing a "Doctor Who" movie with Jane Tranter, BBC Worldwide's L.A.-based exec VP of programming and production.

"We're looking at writers now. We're going to spend two to three years to get it right," he said. "It needs quite a radical transformation to take it into the bigger arena."

"Doctor Who" follows the adventures across space and time of a super-intelligent alien in human form, who battles a variety of cosmic bad guys aided by plucky human companions.

"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.

The series ran from 1963 to 1989, and then was successfully rebooted in 2005 by writer Russell T. Davies and subsequently by Steven Moffat ("The Adventures of Tintin"). Tranter oversaw the revival when she was the BBC's drama topper in London.

"Doctor Who," starring Matt Smith as the 11th incarnation of the Doctor, is now one of the pubcaster's most lucrative global TV franchises.

The series airs Stateside on BBC America.

Yates made clear that his movie adaptation would not follow on from the current TV series, but would take a completely fresh approach to the material."

(Via Variety)