Variety is reporting that director David Yates is teaming up with the BBC to create a Doctor Who movie for the big screen.
Yates told Daily Variety he is about to start work on developing the movie with Jane Tranter, head of BBC Worldwide Productions. “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.”
“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.
Yates emphasized that his movie adaptation will not be a sequel to the current TV series, but will “take a completely fresh approach to the material,” according to Variety.
Of the search for a writer, Yates said “We want a British sensibility, but having said that, Steve Kloves wrote the Harry Potter films and captured that British sensibility perfectly, so we are looking at American writers too,” he explained.
Yates most recently directed the final four Harry Potter films, and previously worked with Tranter on several BBC TV series, including The Way We Live Now and State of Play.