The big news yesterday was that the BBC is starting to develop a movie based on their popular and long running science-fiction series Doctor Who and that Harry Potter franchise director David Yates is set to direct. The news came directly from Yates himself and he certainly doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would just talk nonsense in an interview.
However, that hasn’t stopped some folks at the BBC from publicly downplaying the news. It should be noted that rumors about a Doctor Who movie have circulated for several years, and the BBC has always downplayed them, perhaps fearful that anticipation for a film would somehow negatively impact the desire to watch the television series.
The first two denials come from BBC executive Edward Russell and the official twitter account for Doctor Who Magazine, the officially licensed by the BBC magazine for the show. I think their relationship to each other explains the solidarity of their statements. It should also be noted that the BBC is often loath to confirm any project is currently being worked on until about 20 minutes before it is set to debut. But then again, in broad strokes there is nothing denying the news either.
Of course, it looks as if not all divisions of the BBC got the same memo, as this tweet from BBC America demonstrates.
So what do we know? Russell isn’t really lying as his statement of “Not right now!” jibes with the fact that Yates stated it would probably take about three to four years for the film to get made. My guess is that the BBC will continue to give out non-denial denials right up until the first day of production starts. But don’t think that no news is bad news. I suspect that we probably won’t hear anything more solid on this project for a while. But I do think we will be hearing more.
Via Bleeding Cool.
