Often caught unawares by a question at a bustling premiere or industry event, film and TV people have a habit of declaring their interest in joining whichever project is thrust in front of them. “Sure, that’d be great,” they say non-committedly, kick-starting a flurry of speculative news stories about the next James Bond, Doctor Who or Downton Abbey butler.
In the case of Peter Jackson’s recently expressed desire to direct an episode of Doctor Who however, things may very well move beyond the hypothetical, and into reality.
The Waikato Times (which is fast becoming Den Of Geek’s favourite New Zealand-based news outlet) has pursued their Jackson/Who story to the next stage. After taking Matt Smith’s desire to film an episode in New Zealand to Peter Jackson, they’ve now spoken to Wellington-based Luther creator Neil Cross (already writing an episode for the current series of Who), who’s offered to pen a New Zealand-based script for the show and urged friend Caroline Skinner (Who’s executive producer) to say a few words on the subject.
Those words?
“It is beyond wonderful that Peter is a fan of the show and it’s beyond flattering that he’d even think about it. I’m absolutely sure that we couldn’t afford him but, you know, we can always negotiate. His enthusiasm is just fantastic of course.”
Of course at some point we’d love to bring Doctor Who down under… it won’t be possible until at least a year after the 50th anniversary. We are already two-thirds of the way through the shoots of series seven and although we filmed a couple of episodes abroad I can confirm for the rest of series seven we will be shooting entirely in Cardiff Bay.”
With the Emmys taking place this weekend, both Neil Cross and Steven Moffat were in LA, so Skinner suggests a meeting of minds is planned between the pair:
“Let’s see what those two very brilliant writers come up with whilst they are in LA. Rest assured that we are thinking about it. The landscapes and just the world of New Zealand is of course phenomenal and many movies are set in your beautiful country. It is also an extremely long way from Cardiff Bay so the logistics and the sheer scale of moving Doctor Who to New Zealand is something that would take an awful lot of planning and time.”
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