I might be a bit busy for the rest of the day. I’ve got to march on Hollywood with a burning torch, and I’m told that’s a rather long and wet walk from Sydney. The reason for my outrage? Hollywood’s planning a series of Doctor Who films. History suggests they’ll be anything but good.
Variety reports that David Yates — director of the last four Harry Potter films — is working on developing Doctor Who as a big screen franchise.
Just stop it. Now. Yes, it’s horribly unfair to dismiss a project that doesn’t even have a proper script yet, but if history is any judge, this won’t end well, if it ends up happening at all.
The last time the US got its hands on Doctor Who proper, it made Doctor Who: The Movie. Poor Paul McGann… although now that I think about it, he probably was paid pretty handsomely for the role. More recently, the US version of Torchwood, Miracle Day, was… long. That’s about as nice as I can get describing it, especially when children might be reading.
The Variety article quotes Yates as saying this wouldn’t be a continuation of the TV series
“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”
The last time Doctor Who was in the cinemas with a “fresh” approach? That’d be the pair of Peter Cushing Doctor Who movies, which were at least UK helmed, but aside from being interesting period pieces, were never terribly good. Then again, Doctor Who film projects have been kicked around by the BBC for decades. It may well come to nothing. I can hold onto that hope, can’t I?
Oh, who am I kidding? I’ll be lining up to watch this once it hits the silver screen. I just know it. [Variety]
Image: Shining.Darkness