A few weeks ago David Yates (director on the last four Harry Potter films) said he was working with Jane Tranter of BBC Worldwide to bring a Doctor Who franchise to theaters which would “start from scratch”. Current head writer and executive producer of Doctor Who Steven Moffat responded to the news by tweeting, “Announcing my personal moonshot, starting from scratch. No money, no plan, no help from NASA. But I know where the moon is; I’ve seen it.”

Since then there hasn’t been an update, until Moffat tweeted this weekend:

He followed up by tweeting: “David Yates, great director, was speaking off the cuff, on a red carpet. You’ve seen the rubbish I talk when I’m cornered.” The Variety article didn’t sound like a hurried statement from a red carpet, however. I’m still going to side with Moffat because I want to.

In other Who news, CBM and Blastr have ten promo pictures from this year’s Doctor Who Christmas special, two of which are after the jump and I promise I only defaced one of them.

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You may have read Variety‘s news yesterday that David Yates (director on the last four Harry Potter films) was working with Jane Tranter of BBC to bring a Doctor Who franchise to theaters. Yates said they’re still looking for writers and are “going to spend two to three years to get it right”. Assume I made a “timey-whimey” joke here and we’ll move on, deal? Yates also terrified some Whovians by saying, “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” which could be construed to mean none of the previous Doctors or companions we like will be involved, which would suck. This also has some worrying that this means the TV series is going to end soon, to be replaced with a movie franchise with different writers and actors.

It probably didn’t help that Yates also said wanted a “British sensibility” but might hire American writers. Ooo! Ooo! Hire me! My British English skills are impeccable! Just look at all these Britishisms I’m totally versed in:

I can’t wait to put whimsy flimsy mark and scribblers down on flatty watty tree stacks and help craft this brighty wall play. Call me on the ringy tingy talkie any time, BBC.

Um, anyway, now that it’s all over bar the shouting, [See, BBC? Hire me.] some involved with Doctor Who are suggesting the news isn’t as big as it seems. There’s often a Doctor Who movie in development, and it usually falls through. Now we have Twitter updates from people who know Who.

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A new trailer’s out for series 6.5 of Doctor Who and if there’s one thing they want you to know, it’s that The Doctor is going to die… which is why they say it over and over again.

Now, before you yell “SPOILER!” and hurl your laptop into a wall, we’d like to point out that it was established was going to “die” back in the season opener “The Impossible Astronaut” where he was shot by an inexplicably wading, well, astronaut.

To be honest, we’re pretty certain they’re not going to actually kill The Doctor (especially since Matt Smith has signed on for next year’s Doctor Who series), but hopefully all this death-mentioning means we’ll be getting a explanation for that earlier death scene. Sure we all like layered stories that play out over a long period of time, but after the anti-climactic reveal of River Song’s identity, we’re just anxious for a big mystery to be resolved…and be satisfying.

Apart from all that death talk, what else do we know from this trailer? Well, there’s a split second shot of the Silence, but we already knew they were coming back. Probably the biggest thing was the giant pyramid decorated with a flag and a painted on “Area 52.”  Since Area 51 was such a big part of the first Silence episodes, we’re betting it’s from the season finale, where hopefully they’ll explain what the hell’s been going on for the last two years.

New episodes of Doctor Who premiere on BBC America on August 27th.

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If that screencap of Rory punching Hitler in the face doesn’t make you want to see the first episode of Doctor Who Season 6.2 (airing on BBC America on August 27th), then we probably can’t be friends.  That brief scene is in the trailer below, and we also have a clip reel from “The God Complex”, the episode penned by Toby Whithouse (Being Human).  We also have some footage from the San Diego Comic-Con red carpet of Karen Gillan talking about the Con and announcing she’s signed for the 14 episodes of Season 7.  Here’s something else we learned from the Doctor Who panel at Comic-Con:

Smith said that Moffat just gave him a fez because he kept “bleating on” about wanting the Doctor to have a hat — so Moffat gave the Doctor the stupidest hat he could think of. And now everybody loves it. But Smith hinted that the Doctor’s stetson would be playing an important role in the upcoming episodes. [io9]

Fezzes are cool.

The videos are below.  They’re chock full of weirdness, like Nazis, Winston Churchill fixin’ to bust some caps, Amy Pond wearing armor and wielding a katana, Hitler crediting the Doctor for saving his life, weeping angels, Rory punching Hitler in his stupid Hitler face, a sad clown, and a minotaur.  I have the weirdest boner right now.

[Sources: io9, HeroComplex, Zap2it]

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Trent Reznor has been developing his “Year Zero” album into an apocalyptic sci-fi HBO series for a couple years, and things are finally moving forward.

Based on the 2007 album by Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails, the concept recording criticizes the U.S. government — specifically the Bush years — and presents a dystopian vision of the year 2022. Reznor has already adapted the album into an alternate reality game. [THR]

When last we talked about it, Carnivale‘s Daniel Knauf was writing the pilot.  No word on if he’s still involved, but HBO and BBC Worldwide Productions have hired a writer for the entire series:  Jim Uhls.  He wrote the screenplay adaptation for Fight Club, one of the few screenplays I thought turned out better than the book.  He also wrote the screenplay for Jumper, which he should probably mention on his resume in 8 pt font underneath Fight Club in 30 pt font.  Hopefully this HBO show will also be worthy of 30 pt font.  You don’t want Trent Reznor disappointed in you.  We heard he’s got a pretty hate machine.  Don’t know what it does, but it sounds dangerous.

63-year-old author and awesome dude Sir Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease in 2008.  Yesterday his documentary film, Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die, aired on BBC TWO.  In the documentary, he accompanies millionaire hotel owner and motor-neurone sufferer Peter Smedley to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland, where Smedley drank a cocktail of toxins and then died in his wife’s arms.  Telegraph says it’s the first suicide to be broadcast on terrestrial television in the UK, but I believe Right to Die? was the first one in the UK (and Christine Chubbuck was the first in the US).

Pratchett says he received consent forms for requesting assisted suicide from Dignitas, but he hasn’t signed them yet:

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