The first thing I saw when I got up this moring was an exchange of fearful messages from some online friends based on the news that "Hollywood" would be tackling a Doctor Who film franchise led by director David Yates. If you haven't seen the original article from Variety, click here (it pops) to get caught up. A good deal of the fear about the film will come from the fact that it isn't being made in Britain, but given that everyone involved at the moment from Yates to BBC Worldwide are British, I doubt we are going to get an Americanized version of the Who story. Nobody wants that. Of course, I reserve the right to change my opinion when they cast Will Smith as The Doctor.
That said, I'll be watching the production closely as it moves forward. My big fear is that the franchise is due for a failure. Russel T. Davies did such a brilliant job re-imagining the mythology and Moffat has followed up with darker and even more brilliant stories that hearing Yates say that the film would be a whole new re-imagining of the property doesn't feel me with confidence. It is hard to imagine that Yates has the passion for the character that Davies and Moffat have exhibited. Throughout the run of the current show, fans have been able to remain confident that The Doctor was in good hands. Now, we have to wait and see.
What really interests me, being the nerd I am, is whether the Doctor from the film franchise will count as one of The Doctor's twelve regenerations or, like Peter Cushing, he will be relegated to an alternate reality separate from the television series. I'm sure it will be the latter but one could hope for further exploration of the Time Lord mythology.
So, what do you think about the proposed film series?