Looks like Dr. Who’s big blue police box might be shimmering into view on the big screen.
The BBC has confirmed, in a sentence hidden at the bottom of a story about a David Tennant appearance in CBBC spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures, that “a script is in development” for a **Dr. Who **movie – news which sent both our hearts all a-flutter.
Now, any potential Who-vie could well be a long way off, but if we were a betting website, we’d say that this means that Tennant – arguably the most popular Dr. Who of this, or any, timeline – is not done with the good Doctor just yet, despite having just finished his small screen tenure.
The Scottish actor will be handing over his sonic screwdriver to newcomer Matt Smith, who will debut as the Doctor in new episodes of the TV show, set to be shown next year. But there are rumours, according to Slashfilm, that the regeneration from Tennant to Smith may happen off-screen, allowing Tennant to continue to play the Doctor onscreen.
Frankly, he could carry on in a movie version anyway – after all, any **Dr. Who **movie could be set pre-Smith, while Who continuity has allowed several Doctors to exist together, notably in The Five Doctors. But for us, this makes perfect sense: Tennant gets to forge a big-screen career and continue to play the Doctor, while escaping the drudgery of a weekly TV show schedule.
If the rumours/speculation/story-concocted-from-one-sentence are true, it’ll be the first proper Dr. Who movie since Peter Cushing played Gallifrey’s favourite son in Daleks’ Invasion Earth: 2150 AD back in 1966 AD. Fingers crossed that it happens, because frankly we’re not ready to say goodbye to Tennant just yet, even if we are slightly concerned about the ability of BBC Films to fund a movie that can compete with the big boys on the silver screen.
More news on this as we get it.