David Yates to Direct ‘Doctor Who’ Movie

David Yates, known for directing the Harry Potter movies, will team up with BBC to direct the upcoming Doctor Who movie.

Yates told Variety that he will bring the Doctor Who television series to the big screen, though it will take quite some time to perfect adapting the British show into a film.

We're looking at writers now. We're going to spend two to three years to get it right, Yates told Variety. It needs quite a radical transformation to take it into the bigger arena.

By quite a radical transformation, Yates means ditching revived-version creators Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat and taking on a fresher approach.

Russell T. Davies and then Steven Moffat have done their own transformations, which were fantastic, but we have to put that aside and start from scratch, he said.

According to a report from BBC, Yates is rumored to be working with BBC Los Angeles head Jane Tranter, as the show has become popular across the pond since its airing on BBC America.

The project is unlikely to reach cinemas for several years and as yet there is no script, cast or production crew in place, a spokesperson for BBC Worldwide Productions in Los Angeles said.

The original Doctor Who television series began in 1963, with seven different actors playing the time-and-space-travelling Doctor before the show went off air in 1989. The series was revived in 2005 with Christopher Eccleston, before being replaced by David Tennant.

This year, with Doctor Who in its sixth season, Matt Smith plays the Doctor. Yates, however, will not cast Smith as the movie version's Doctor, instead looking for someone else to take on the role.

David Yates directed the last four Harry Potter movies including Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and both parts of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Yates seems to have a few tricks up his sleeve for taking on his second British franchise from a total new angle while preserving the feel of the Doctor.

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.

The series was made into films on two separate occasions, Doctor Who and the Daleks in 1965 and Doctor Who: Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. in 1966 starring Peter Cushing.