Russell T Davies may have ruled out ever writing an episode of Doctor Who again, but it appears he doesn’t feel the same about a movie.


Responding to a listener question on Radio 2, the former showrunner – who revived the sci-fi series in 2005 – told Graham Norton that a Doctor Who movie would be “glorious – imagine queuing up at the cinema to go and see a Doctor Who film”. Davies also said that he would be interested in writing it, but acknowledged that his comments may not go down well with the show’s current production team.

“Yes please! If we could get the lawyers and contracts flying now… You know I would do that because I think there’s a big leap to be made on to the screen. Oh, I can hear the Doctor Who office with their head in their hands now going, ‘shut up, Davies, shut up.’ I have literally just realised where I am – broadcasting to the nation. I’m in trouble now… They’ll kill me for that!”

Davies’ comments come after telling Radio Times that – despite being invited every year by Steven Moffat to write an episode – he has “moved on” from Doctor Who, preferring to focus on projects such as his new interlinked dramas Cucumber and Banana, which air respectively on Channel 4 and E4 later this week.

There have been on-and-off rumours of a second attempt – the first being 1996’s TV movie – for years. The most recent was in 2012 when Harry Potter director David Yates claimed that a big screen Hollywood reboot was in the pipeline. Current showrunner Steven Moffat dismissed this assertion as a “weird fantasy.”


“Look, we hopefully will do a Doctor Who film someday,” he said. “It will be absolutely run by the Doctor Who production office in Cardiff. It will feature the same Doctor as on television. It will not be a rebooted continuity. All of that would be insane. So that whole proposal was not true, did not happen. I can say that with authority because, as far as the BBC is concerned, I’m the voice of Doctor Who. So if I say it, it’s true.”