Doctor Who boss Steven Moffat has denied that a re-booted movie spin-off of the popular sci-fi show is in the pipeline.
And the BBC show's executive producer told Entertainment Weekly that claims by Harry Potter director David Yates to be working on [uuid=97199cc0-766e-43a5-a9c0-640625237c12]a movie project[/uuid] were "some weird fantasy".
Last year Yates told Variety: "We're looking at writers now. 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."
But now, more than six months later, Moffat has flatly denied that.
He said: "There isn't a film. That was all some weird fantasy going on somewhere.
"Look, we hopefully will do a Doctor Who film someday. 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.
"The BBC own Doctor Who and, for the moment, I run it for them. So I can assure you definitively that was all nonsense — not the idea of making a film, we'd love to make a film, but the idea of a rebooted continuity, a different Doctor. That's writing the book on how to destroy a franchise.
"You don't behave like that with it. Not ever."
When asked if Yates had been involved, he was slightly more ambivalent.
"I don't think he was ever signed to it. I never signed him, so he's not," Moffat explained.
"But I think he's [expressed] an interest in doing it and he's a very fine director and I think he'd certainly be someone that would be on the list for directing such a project.
"I'm a big fan of his. But the project as he describes it would not happen. It was all a bit more off the cuff than it seemed to be."
So now you know. Maybe.