David Yates has been spending the better part of the last seven years directing the final half of one of the most lucrative franchises in the history of cinema. Now that the plucky “boy who lived” is all done with his misadventures at Hogwarts, Yates is looking to bring his new found clout to another of Britian’s fictional Goliaths, Dr. Who.

Variety is reporting that Yates has teamed up with BBC Worldwide Productions to bring the Doctor to the movies.

“We’re looking at writers now. We’re going to spend two to three years to get it right,” [Yates] said. “It needs quite a radical transformation to take it into the bigger arena.”

Dr. Who is the longest running sci-fi television show of all time. Spanning nearly fifty years, this classic show has gone under several major overhauls and is know for it’s ability to re-shuffle itself on the fly. The most incredible thing about the Dr. Who franchise is that flexibility has been worked into the cannon of the show. The Doctor is always the same guy, he just “regenerates” into a new body, personality and all. Neat huh?

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Hollywood has been remaking old television shows into big screen adventures for years now. It’s been a trend with limited success, and every time you think it’ll die off with something like The Mod Squad,  we get news of another Charlie’s Angels or a big screen McCloud.

Lately, there’s been a weird interest in reviving tv westerns.  Last August, CBS Films announced they were developing a feature film based on Gunsmoke, the legendary series that ran for an exhausting 20 seasons.   Prior to television, it ran for nearly ten years as a radio serial.  No one could get enough of Marshall Matt Dillon back in the day, and apparently he’s due for a modern makeover.

Despite having its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, Gunsmoke was quite edgy for its time. Long before John Ford or Sergio Leone,  Norman MacDonald and John Meston sought to dismantle the cutesy, archtypical Old West that had been seen up until then. They wanted a harder, cruder hero and a more realistic and brutal West. Their Marshall Matt Dillon was no hero in a white hat, and the Dodge City he patrolled was full of shady and violent characters.

It was aimed at adults, and was one of the first radio shows to depict scalping, prostitution, opium addiction, and massacres. Dillon killed a heck of a lot of people, and his creators proudly said that he was as scarred and dangerous as the villains of Dodge City.

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I’ve made no secret about being excited for the The A-Team movie coming out this summer.  No matter what other trailer I see (including even Iron Man 2) there’s something  about The A-Team that just resonates with me. Maybe it’s the nostalgia factor or it could be that director Joe Carnahan knows how to make a kick-ass action film (see Smokin’ Aces).  Either way, it’s my number one pick for the 2010 Summer blockbuster season.

One particular aspect of the new film I’m looking forward to are the cameos from Dirk Benedict and Dwight Shultz, the original Faceman and Murdock.  With these two secured I was certain Carnahan would pull off the best cameo trio ever and get Mr. T as well. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Latino Review caught up with Mr. T (at a gym no less) and asked him about whether he’d be in the new film, which apparently he won’t be:

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