Doctor Who To Become Hollywood Feature Film 357
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Variety reports that David Yates, who directed the last four Harry Potter films, is teaming up with the BBC to turn its iconic sci-fi TV series Doctor Who into a Hollywood franchise. 'We're looking at writers now. We're going to spend two to three years to get it right,' says Yates. 'It needs quite a radical transformation to take it into the bigger arena.' But not everyone is enamored with the idea of Doctor Who on the big screen. 'I fear that high production values and the inevitable sexualisation of the lead characters that a Hollywood treatment brings will destroy the show,' writes Andrew M. Brown in the Telegraph. 'The ecosystem of a great television programme is a delicate thing. Please, Hollywood, don't spoil Doctor Who."
Steven Moffat's reply (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Because the last Doctor Who movie was great... (Score:5, Informative)
Please don't blame Canada for that movie. We didn't write it, we didn't direct it, we didn't produce it. We just provided facilities and most of the cast and crew, not the creative team that actually made the film.
Re:Because the last Doctor Who movie was great... (Score:3, Informative)
Doctor Who: The Movie, was a weakly veiled attempt at a reboot pilot episode, and for the love of all that is holy, it had Eric "Best of the Best" Roberts as the Master...such a bad decision. It was obviously targetted at the American audience.
This next one, I have very little hope for. In my opinion Dr. Who is a live action cartoon strip, one I grew up with (Baker years). Any movie will just seem like a glorified Christmas special, and really I wish they would stop those.
Re:yes! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Lol (Score:4, Informative)
Only most of the time.
Personally, while some agree, I would say that the lord of the rings trilogy was quite well done.
and better then i would of thought possible.
The Hannibal lector series is also, in my opinion, very good and even better then the books.
Re:Lol (Score:5, Informative)
Just like how the original book is true to the radio series before it.
Re:Because the last Doctor Who movie was great... (Score:4, Informative)
Well, I always just assumed while watching it that the movie was *set* in Vancouver, although it wasn't. Anyhow, being made in Canada certainly influenced the production, but it's ultimately up to the director/producers/etc to make decisions. You've got movies made in Canada that have no indication that they were. Source Code was made here in Montreal, but I had no idea until the credits rolled. That's the way it normally is; we watch a movie, and only when we start seeing a lot of French Canadian names in the credits does it become obvious the movie was made locally.
Christopher Eccleston (Score:5, Informative)
Re:it started in 2005 (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, and apparently they're trying for some sort of record on how fast they can turn over doctors.
Actually, the median per regeneration seems to be somewhere around three years, ignoring the gaps between the old run and the movie, and the movie to the new run, so even if Matt Smith leaves after next year, he isn't leaving unusually early. Granted, the 8th and 9th both were exceptionally short lived, but Tennant actually had the second longest run at 4 years, 6 months, after Tom Baker's 6 years 9 months. Granted, the modern Doctors don't stack up as well in episode count. Even when you account for the fact that they are making longer episodes then they did back when, the older Doctors still were making more content per year.
If your interested in how long each Doctor lasted... [themindrobber.co.uk]
Re:Everyone, relax (Score:4, Informative)
The difference being that when Star Trek was released, the Trek franchise was pretty much dead in the water, whereas Doctor Who is currently pretty damn successful; it's either going to have to be canon (and thus a commercial failure) or non-canon and thus not really Doctor Who.
Not really sure I agree with that. It's quite possible to create a canon Doctor Who that would be commercially successful. To my mind, the only piece of Doctor Who that could be turned into a movie though would be the beginning. That is; the point at which The Doctor stole the Tardis... or when the Tardis stole him depending on your POV of course :) There's no reason at all he couldn't do so as a young man and through the course of even a metric ton of movies grow into a crotchety old man who will eventually end up in England in the 1960's. There's no telling how much travel he did prior to the beginning of the TV series... could be a long time. That would be canon, has the potential to be a good movie (or more), doesn't restrict itself to Earth in any particular time period (how long did it take before The Dr. discovered his soft spot for Humans?) and doesn't need to get into that annoyingly complicated regeneration thing.
There's certainly a lot of potential there for an intelligent but less wise Doctor, learning how to fly the Tardis for the first time and perhaps dealing with the consequences of having stolen it.
And for the record, I DO agree that Star Trek was moribund due to mismanagement... but even as a fan of TOS, TNG and DS9 (and have a soft spot for Enterprise even though it was not great) I actually rather enjoyed the movie because I went in with no preconceived notions. I for one look forward to a sequel.