Doctor Who fans have for years been asking about a potential movie, but showrunner Steven Moffat said in a recent interview that we shouldn't get our hopes up.
According to Slashfilm, Steven Moffat said that a Doctor Who movie won't happen for now largely because of budget. He said that since it's one of the world's biggest TV shows it would have to be a huge movie with a big budget, and he just doesn't think they can get the proper amount of funding for it for now.
He also noted that Doctor Who is publicly funded, and so they can't just leach from the TV series budget to make the movie. Also, Moffat says that assuming the movie would feature a different Doctor like in the 1996 TV movie, he wouldn't want to do that while the show was running. That would create a situation where there were two doctors running at the same time. And if the movie was to star the same Doctor as in the TV show, there wouldn't really be time to do that unless the show just took several years off so they could make the movie.
That might be disappointing to fans who hoped to see a huge budget Doctor Who on the big screen, but this is probably for the best. Maybe Doctor Who is a show that belongs on the small screen, and we wouldn't want to see a movie unless it could really be done right.
For now, we can look forward to the ninth season of Doctor Who, which will premiere sometime later this year. There is some good news, though: According to The Hollywood Reporter, Steven Moffat said Doctor Who will run for at least five more years. He said the show will have a minimum of 15 seasons, though he could imagine it going until Season 26. Given how massively successful the show has been all over the world, that hardly seems unreasonable.
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