Steven Moffat finally chimed in on the news of a Doctor Who Hollywood reboot, which director David Yates has been crowing about. On Friday, Moffat tweeted:
To clarify: any Doctor Who movie would be made by the BBC team, star the current TV Doctor and certainly NOT be a Hollywood reboot.
Movie thing: David Yates, great director, was speaking off the cuff, on a red carpet. You’ve seen the rubbish I talk when I’m cornered.
Um, what? Yates sounded pretty sure of himself a couple weeks ago:
Yates, who directed the last four Potter films, told Daily Variety that he is about to start work on developing a “Doctor Who” movie with Jane Tranter, head of L.A.-based BBC Worldwide Prods.
“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.”
This is pretty specific for an off-the-cuff comment.
So what the heck is going on?
I fear Rob Bricken at Topless Robot may have the right of it:
What’s weird is that Yates made his announcement on November 14th, and Moffat only responded earlier today, December 2nd. I see one of two possibilities here: the first is that after Yates said his spiel, Moffat went to the BBC, tore them a new one, and swore he would quit Who if they didn’t get their shit straight and make the Who movie in regular contin-Who-ity. These discussions/threats took a couple of weeks, but the BBC acquiesced, and only today did Moffat feel confident enough to announce that any Who movie would be based on the TV series.
That’s one possibility. The other is that Moffat is out of the loop, because he works on the Doctor Who TV show, and not with BBC Worldwide, who are in charge of the movie. Maybe Moffat’s bosses at the Beeb are telling him it will be fine, but meanwhile Yates and his partner Jane Tranter, BBC Worldwide’s L.A.-based exec VP of programming and production, are asking Jason Statham if he’d be interested in being a Time Lord.
I don’t know which is more likely, honestly, but I don’t think we’re out of the woods yet.
I’m with Bricken: We probably shouldn’t be breathing any sighs of relief just yet.
(If you stumble across a cool Doctor Who thing, feel free to email me with a link.)
Moffat wasn’t responding to the Variety article, he was responding to a more recent interview with David Yates at a BAFTA LA event:
http://www.doctorwhonews.net/2011/12/dwn021211001008-doctor-who-film-update.html
So, yes, David Yates was talking off the cuff, on a red carpet. This is part of what he said:
“I can’t really talk about that because its such a long way away. We’re
principally looking for a writer, and we’ll start with that. Everything
has to start with a great script, so that’s more important than casting.”
link: http://www.doctorwhonews.net/2011/12/dwn021211001008-doctor-who-film-update.html
Moffat did respond to the original Variety article on twitter at the time:
“Announcing my personal moonshot, starting from scratch. No money, no
plan, no help from NASA. But I know where the moon is – I’ve seen it.” http://twitter.com/#!/steven_moffat/status/136473335147139072
and
“@TomSpilsbury Tom, Interpretative German Dance Hospital Drama is a crown jewel of the BBC, and you should be careful what you say in public!” http://twitter.com/#!/steven_moffat/status/136481357302996992
I think he was rather annoyed that Yates was thinking aloud in public, without realising the fuss that any statement would make, no matter how early in the process things are.
And let’s be clear: Yates was sharing his thoughts about a project that, at the time, he had yet to start working on, which, it was clear, would be in development (he thought for two-three years) and which didn’t (and still doesn’t) have a writer, much less a script. No matter how certain Variety makes him seem, it should be obvious that nothing is set in stone. And, at that stage, there was no reason for Moffat to be in the loop.
The movie has been in devlopment since at least 2009, this time around (there have been movie projects since 1989, on and off, and a few before that), this is likely still at the throwing ideas around stage. It would probably be a waste of time for Moffat to get closely involved unless there was at least likely it would go into production we’re way off that, at present.
I suspect that since Yates felt he had to comment some more, Moffat felt the need to clarify further. I don’t think there’s much point in reading anything more than that into it.