With the entirety of the leaked Sony emails getting uploaded to Wikileaks, we now know that the BBC wants to make another Doctor Who movie. An email exchange from January 2014 between Andrew Wong (president of International Production for Sony) and Sony chief executive Michael Lynton details how BBC Worldwide wants to capitalize on the brand’s resurgence in popularity, but the showrunners are worried about it being done badly.
They seem to have reached a compromise: the showrunners have been laying out an eight-year brand timeline into which a movie could fit. From Wong’s email:
[Danny Cohen, director of BBC Television] said that while there has been tremendous interest (and pressure from BBCWW) [BBC Worldwide] to do a Dr. Who film, the show runners feel very clear that they don’t want to do one at this moment.
That said, over the course of the coming months, the show running team is coming up with an 8 year timeline for the brand—laying out all that will happen with it.
He says that a film will certainly be a part of that timeline. So the answer is that a film won’t happen in the next year to 18 months, but it is expected that it will happen after that within the 8 year horizon.
There were two Doctor Who movies (Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks—Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D.) made in the 1960s starring Peter Cushing, but they are regarded as existing outside of the television series’ canon. And of course, there’s the 1996 movie starring Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor, which was intended to reboot the franchise. With the series instead getting rebooted in 2005, a movie would likely supplement the TV show instead of the other way around.
But, eight years from now! This is an especially interesting detail, as Steven Moffat recently confirmed that the series would run for at least five more years. Whether the showrunners’ eight-year plan is still in the works—or if, like other plans leaked by the Sony emails, that strategy has been scrapped—has yet to be seen.
Is another Who movie a good idea? How could it work, and what kinds of things would you like to see? Share your ideas in the comments!
Thoughts, feelings, cynicism, grumpiness, excitement, etc…
I’ll watch it.
It sounds to me like the movie would be somewhere in the middle of the 8 years, to give the BBC and showrunners some time to work on other projects, while passing off the actual production to a different set of hands.
The big question is: But will Johnny Depp be available?
I can only presume that the box office return (however large or small it was) from the limited theatrical release of “The Day of the Doctor” will be / has been taken into account by the powers that be when considering a DW movie. There are so many different ways to approach it — have the series build toward the movie’s events, treating it like a huge season finale of sorts? They’d only do that if they feel extremely confident that the majority of movie-goers will be regular show watchers. Conversely, they could try to make the movie be totally stand-alone, though it’s always a difficult balancing act to see how a story big enough to be in a movie wouldn’t have an impact on the rest of the show.
Or, like Stubby says, maybe the deal fell through anyway. But I’d be keen to see a DW movie, as long as it was actually part of the show’s continuity and not just a movie version of one of the episodes the way the ’60’s movies were.
-Andy
Hmm, I cant imagine Doctor Who as a movie. But of course I would see it. My second thought is that even though a lot of us are familiar with and love Doctor Who… most people in the US are not too familiar with him… so I dont think the movie would do well to just jump into the ongoing story arc/8 yr plan. You have to introduce the character to the movie audience…. Therefore, IMHO the movie should be a Doctor Who origin story… start with him stealing the tardis and take it from there… (insert wisecrack JJ Abrahms reboot movie joke with lens flare here). This would be fun for the diehard fans and also someone who has never heard of Doctor Who.
While it would be great to see something theatrical, I actually hope for something different than just an extended episode on the big screen.
How about another movie with the Eighth Doctor, taking place between the first and his reincarnation as the War Doctor. Be a great way to add more to the series, without affecting those who are watching the current run. Plus, more Paul McGann would be great.
If the only way we ever see the Eighth in is the theater, it’d even be a good bit of trivia. You know how we like that.
@5 I think an origin would work well actually. A feature film could do a lot with Gallifrey that the tv budget is never going to do justice, plus they could cheat pretty easily with a younger (i.e. recast) First Doctor.
Though since Paul McGann has barely aged since his movie, something to fill in Eight could be fun as @6 suggests, and be more or less in its own bubble, canonwise. Although how to make that different from the more ‘epic’ of the tv eps might be a bit tricky.