Variety report that
Harry Potter director David Yates will team with the BBC to bring
Doctor Who, the long running and much loved British TV series, to the big screen. Having helmed the last four
Potter movies, Yates confirmed that he'll be working on the project with BBC Worldwide's Jane Tranter.
"We're looking at writers now. We're going to spend two to three years to get it right. It needs quite a radical transformation to take it into the bigger arena."
"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," he added. The series first hit the small screen in 1963 and was brought back in 2005 after an absence of 16 years. However, despite the current series (featuring Matt Smith as "The Doctor") having a strong following both in the UK and US, the movie will NOT be any sort of continuation or adaptation 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."
"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."