Harry Potter Director David Yates Developing ‘Doctor Who’ Movie

The world is about to spontaneously combust from too much awesome. Variety is reporting that Harry Potter director David Yates is gearing up to develop a big screen adaptation of the much beloved British sci-fi television show “Doctor Who.” *faint*

Yates, who directed the last four Potter films for Warner Brothers is said to be developing the new “Doctor Who” movie 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.”

“Doctor Who” is about a time traveling alien known only as The Doctor, and the BBC series features various incarnations of “The Doctor” and their adventures through time and space.

According to Variety, the “movie adaptation would not follow on from the current TV series, but would take a completely fresh approach to the material.”

“The notion of the time-travelling Time Lord is such a strong one, because you can express story and drama in any dimension or time,” Yates said, adding that he and Tranter are open to non-British writers for the adaptation.

“We want a British sensibility, but having said that, Steve Kloves wrote the Potter films and captured that British sensibility perfectly, so we are looking at American writers too,” he said.

While there’s no official word on when a “Doctor Who” movie will actually be released, The official Doctor Who Magazine believes that this is the same movie rumor that has been going around for years and that no actual progress has taken place.

Likewise, Senior Brand Executive for BBC Wales Edward Russell wrote on Twitter, “Off Twitter for a few hours and the Doctor Who world explodes. There’s always talk of a movie. Perhaps? Maybe one day. But not right now!”

So what does this all mean? There seems to be a lot of mixed reports going around, but it’s also unusual for any director, Yates especially, to openly disclose projects or projects he’d wish he could do. Perhaps this is Yates way of putting things into motion, or could it be that Yates knows something that others don’t? I guess only time will tell. But for now, feel free to nerd out and piss yourself with joy. We certainly are.