HARRY POTTER Director David Yates To Helm Big Screen DOCTOR WHO Reboot

Per Variety: HARRY POTTER director David Yates is teaming up with the BBC to turn its iconic sci-fi TV series DOCTOR WHO into a bigscreen franchise, Variety’s Adam Dawtrey exclusively reports from London. Yates, who directed the last four Potter films, told Variety that he is about to start work on developing the pic with Jane Tranter, BBC Worldwide’s L.A.-based exec VP of programming and production. “We’re looking at writers now,” Yates said. “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 made clear that his movie adaptation would not follow on from the current TV series, but would take a completely fresh approach.

I’m not totally sure how to properly process the information above without typing the word “FU*K” over and over again until my fingers begin to bleed.

Why reboot now? Why reboot something as beloved as DOCTOR WHO? And, more importantly, why go full reboot? Why not just have current Doctor Matt Smith die and regenerate into a new Doctor Who whose adventures are exclusively on the big screen?

I don’t understand the rationale of abandoning fifty years of mythos and history (on the 50th anniversary of the series) in favor of a big budget adventure that will no doubt pale in comparison to what came before. Part of what makes this series so great (especially the more recent episodes) is the history between the characters and their stories. Abandoning all that in favor of some glitzy Hollywood-ized redo (you know there’s some exec out there just itching to see Johnny Depp in the lead) is an insult to the series, the characters and the entire fanbase.

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