David Yates to Direct DOCTOR WHO Movie

Yes, you read that right. There's going to be a Doctor Who movie directed by David Yates, who's known for putting his touch on the final four films of the Harry Potter franchise. For those of you who are unaware of what Doctor Who is, well, a) get out of your rock, and b), well, here. It follows an alien known as The Doctor who travels across time and space with a human companion. The Doctor is known as a "Time Lord" who travels in his TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space), which is a big blue London Police box. He can also regenerate his form when he's about to die, so there have been many Doctors in the past. The show is currently the longest running television show in history, and there have been 11 Doctors, the most recent being played by Matt Smith. Hit the jump for more details involving the movie and how Yates plans to go about it.

Yates tells Variety

“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.”

Yates and producer Jane Tranter are currently looking at writers in both the UK and the US even though the series has always been British. In defending looking at American writers, Yates says

 “Steve Kloves wrote the Potter films and captured that British sensibility perfectly, so we are looking at American writers too.”

Yates also has said that his version will NOT follow the current TV series and will be a fresh approach on the material. All in all, I'm very mixed on this whole thing. I was a huge fan of Yates work on the Harry Potter films, which shows that he could work with a lot of material that's already there. But the fact of the matter is...this is Doctor Who. This is one of the most epic television shows in the history of television. Hell, the show first started in 1963. There's been over 700 episodes. It's just massive. There have been movies made of Doctor Who, but they've always stuck to the story-line and used the same actors and actresses. To go and try to take a fresh approach on the material while it's still going on? And while the show has reached such a high and interesting point in the series? It's risky, and it may backfire. Either way, I'm still excited for it, and I will see it.

Fun fact though: David Tennent, who played Barty Crouch Jr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was the 10th Doctor, and in my opinion, the best of the rebooted series by far.