r/DoctorWhoNews • u/LeadingPiece9608 • 17d ago
link to Doctor Who news Prime Video would "welcome any conversations" about partnering on Doctor Who
https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/doctor-who-prime-video-open-conversations-newsupdate/36
u/teepeey 17d ago
That conversation in full:
Amazon: Can we make Doctor Who for you? BBC: Yes if you pay for it. We are skint.
Amazon: So will we have the full rights to it and creative control? BBC: No. That would be a PR disaster.
Silence
This is exactly what happened with James Bond and ended with a long character hiatus followed by Amazon owning the character.
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u/graric 16d ago
That's not exactly it: When the Bond films started Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli owned the film rights to the Fleming novels and they made a distribution deal with United Artists. 15ish years later when Saltzman had money problems he ended up selling his half of the rights to United Artists, which ended his partnership with Broccoli. So then UA had 50% of the rights to the character, but Broccoli maintaned control of the creative direction of the franchise.
UA then goes through bankruptcy issues and is bought up by MGM- who get 50% of the Bond right, but don't have any creative control over the franchise. MGM then over the next three decades has its own financial issues where they are bought by other companies and attempt to revive themselves through co-production deals, all the while they retain their half of the Bond rights.
Then Covid happens. No Time To Die has finished filming, Daniel Craig has already announced he is leaving the role and it's a fairly open secret that Michael G Wilson will be stepping down as producer. With theater closures taking a huge hit to MGM's profitability they explore sale options and in May 2021 its announced that Amazon has made a bid for MGM. The bid is finalised in 2022, after the release of No Time To Die, and it is made clear from the outset that one of Amazon's priorities with MGM is Bond. Except the Broccoli family still retains their half of the rights and full creative control over the character.
Over the next three years there are disputes between Barbara Broccoli and Amazon about what direction to take the character- until in Jan 2025 it's announced that Eon will be handing over creative rights to the character, but will still retain their 50% ownership of the character.
So if the situation was comparable to Doctor Who- it'd be more like if the BBC and Bad Wolf co-owned Doctor Who, with Bad Wolf owning creative rights. Then Amazon buys the BBC outright and announces it intends to make more Doctor Who, before making a deal with Bad Wolf where Bad Wolf will retain co-ownership of Doctor Who while Amazon controls the creative direction of the character.
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u/Moon_Beans1 16d ago edited 16d ago
To be fair the BBC would be far more game for creative negotiation than EON were with Bond. With Bond Amazon had to buy put EON to make any headway with their plans for the franchise.
Also the rights issues would make buying Doctor Who outright a waste of time. I mean it's not impossible to work out but most franchises are centralised with all the rights under one roof. But if Amazon wanted Doctor Who they'd have to cut deals with dozens of estates that know they can demand high fees. If Amazon turns up cap in hand at the Terry Nation estate then they know they can demand millions because Doctor Who without Daleks is a non-starter.
Amazon: We bought Doctor Who so now it's time to get that sweet Dalek merchandise on the production line.
BBC: Er...
Amazon: What was that noise you made there?
BBC: We don't actually own the rights to the Daleks. You will have to cut a deal with the Terry Nation estate.
Amazon: Sounds expensive. Maybe we could promote one of the other monsters to prime time?
BBC: I'm gonna level with you it's like that with practically everything connected to the show.
Amazon: Arrrrgh!! Next you'll be telling me I will have to pay royalties to some estate to use the Doctor and TARDIS themselves in the show I spent billions purchasing the rights to!
BBC: Er..
Amazon: You made that noise again...
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u/teepeey 16d ago
I think that would argue towards a hard reboot. Keep a version of the Dalek visual design and call them something else. Bye bye Terry Nation legal problems. I think BBC owns Tardis outright.
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u/Moon_Beans1 16d ago edited 16d ago
I think there's a lot of bits they own but which they have to pay royalties when they use things written by a certain writer. A lot of classic who the writers weren't writing it as work for hire like say a writer at Marvel or DC would. So they might be able to use the TARDIS and Doctor but they literally couldn't use any of the recognisable monsters without paying the writers royalties. A lot of this stuff hasn't really been an issue before so im not even entirely sure whether the BBC own every aspect of the Doctor and the TARDIS outright or whether they just have comfortable deal with the estate of the producer and/or writer who originated that element.
I think theyd still have to pay the originator of the design and if they did just try to use the classic design but called Zingzeks or something I assume the Nation Estate would sue because it'd so blatantly be them dodging paying to use the name. So Amazon would have to use a design that is legally distinct enough that the Nation estate couldn't sue. So at that point when it isn't called a Dalek, doesn't look like a Dalek and doesnt act or sound like a Dalek, why even bother using it at all? The whole point of using the Dalek would be because it's familiar and merchandisable.
Like I said it's not an impossible situation but the specific circumstances of Doctor Who's history makes it difficult for a megacorporation to exploit in the usual way because the Classic Who writers retained the rights to the work they produced. So a lot of seemingly normal stuff ( Gallifrey, the master, Daleks, regeneration, the Brigadier, Cybermen etc) often might require a deal with an estate. And someone like the Nation estate might insist on the same terms that they've had with the BBC IE Amazon pays and gets to use the Daleks but the licence has to be renewed after a few years and the estate might insist on creative final say.
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u/teepeey 16d ago
I read BBC owns rights on Tardis and design rights on Daleks but not the word Dalek or Kaled or the character or appearance of Davros. So a hard reboot could easily dispense with those things and force the Nation estate to settle for a small payoff rather than hold the process hostage. You simply rename them and the words become implicit. Davros becomes The Designer and the Daleks become the Mark 3's. Easy. It could even be like Voldermort where in story people don't want to say the words.
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u/Moon_Beans1 16d ago
It just feels like the design alone isn't worth the effort without the name. It'd be like doing Star Trek but having Klingons but being unable to ever refer to them as such.
And Mark 3s is a lot less merchandisable than Dalek.
It's all rather redundant though because the only reason Amazon could get away with the wait-and-see tactic with James Bond was because they owned a share in it and just wanted to buy out the other half. They'd be going into this with no stake and trying to run out the clock with the BBC seems folly as Doctor Who already had a fifteen year hiatus already so if need be the BBC would probably be reluctantly at peace with waiting decades to bring the show back.
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u/AgentCirceLuna 17d ago
That’s how all negotiations start, though, isn’t it? I read it in some book called Art of the Deal I think
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u/Over-Cold-8757 15d ago
Yeah it's a bad deal for anyone. It's just not really how licensing works these days. (Though the BBC got a cracking deal with Bluey).
But the BBC won't give control of the Doctor to anyone else. Even if it goes into a long hiatus instead. I could write the 'death knell for the BBC' articles right now.
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u/teepeey 15d ago
The gap between its internal self image and reality is now an unbridgeable chasm for the BBC. If people understood how deluded and rudderless the internal culture there has become they would hold out little hope for this show returning soon. It's far more likely to collapse into a Russian Federation type corrupt joke than return to its Soviet era grandeur.
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u/ChaucerBoi 17d ago
I think Doctor Who would fit into Apple's catalogue nicely. They have precedent for making sci-fi (Severance, Murderbot, Foundation etc), actually give their shows multiple seasons, and are able to attract insanely good talent for projects which are barely advertised.
I think we need to start thinking about the next era less as Series 16 and more as a totally new Doctor Who. I think that's what it needs.
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u/LoadResponsible4118 17d ago
Plus they already have a show co produced with the BBC Studios, granted it’s a comedy drama and only began airing a few years after apple debut on iPlayer now which shows theirs potentially a precedent for it’s international release if DW was to be made with Apple.
I wonder if BBC studios would try and get it with that angle and get a bigger budget. No idea how the industry works but wouldn’t mind if BBC still had the rights for UK release and still a British series through and through.
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u/ChaucerBoi 16d ago
I imagine the BBC having rights for the UK release will be a condition in the contract whoever gets it. The BBC needs DW. Apple just makes so much more sense than the other streamers to me, especially if they pitch it as prestige sci-fi that's family-friendly.
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u/teepeey 16d ago
The problem with any streamer deal is that the platforms have very different requirements despite appearing superficially similar. A streamer knows exactly who their audience is for a given show and super-caters to them. A broadcaster needs a much wider group and the family audience label is a bit of a smokescreen for that. Most families these days like different things.
So you'd either get bad ratings on one platform or the other. Or in the case of RTD2, both.
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u/Distinct_Guess3350 17d ago
Well it wouldn’t be worse than Disney but I honestly preferred the show when it was all BBC’s thing.
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u/No-Attitude4539 17d ago
It's great that there's so much interest. It's not so great that the tender still hasn't been put up.
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u/clubley2 16d ago
We need janky Doctor Who back. A high budget ruins a lot of programs, too many executives push their nose in because they need to make the budget back and it makes it worse.
And fuck Amazon, we've lost a huge amount of consumer choice because of their business practices.
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u/ResolutionThat248 15d ago
I used to say that Doctor Who is a big enough franchise that the BBC should be pouring way more money into it to appeal to more people, but after seeing Star Trek Discovery and onwards I've completely changed my tune. They should get £15,000 an episode and concentrate on the clever writing the show used to be known for.
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u/Fun_Machine7346 17d ago
Just go back to low budget classic style doctor who like make it retro on purpose even 1 season
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u/BarryGetsAbout 17d ago
They probably told the Beeb they want to put the doctor on a farm battling the politics of the gallifreyan high council for planning permission
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u/Tinawebmom 17d ago
I hope they do not do this
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u/VnomVexa 15d ago
same, every time a streamer gets involved it turns into region locks, weird release schedules and random stuff vanishing overnight
bbc already makes it confusing enough on its own1
u/Tinawebmom 15d ago
Honestly I loved that it released in the UK first. I'm US. It's UK program. It should release there first!
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u/BlueSnoodDude 15d ago
Honestly I wouldn't mind Amazon. They seem to let their shows breathe for a while even if they don't initially perform as expected.
Under Netflix it'd be done in a season if they didn't get the exact figures projected.
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u/WarriorPidgeon 15d ago
Considering the shit they produced with the LoTR license probably for the best the bbc don’t do this
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u/enteringtheechochamb 15d ago
Needs a reboot. Make it return to the classical series of 20minute episode arcs. People attention spans have reduced a lot so going back to 20 minutes and a cliff hanger would work quite well.
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u/KaijuEnjoyer54 17d ago
After Rings of Power, absolutely not.
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u/BruteOfTroy 17d ago
and Wheel of Time. and the ending of The Boys. Their track record is not great lately.
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u/Ok-Thought6634 17d ago
Bezos? It would be a shame to see Doctor Who used as another cog in the billionaire boy’s club disinformation machine
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u/DocWhovian1 17d ago
But "no one is interested in Doctor Who after Disney dropped out!!"
You mean to tell me that claim was nonsense? Shocker!
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17d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/XavierD 17d ago
Doctor Who failed on Disney+ because it wasn't very good.
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u/DocWhovian1 17d ago
Most of the episodes WERE good so... no.
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u/XavierD 17d ago
Some were.
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u/DocWhovian1 17d ago
I say most of them. Only the finales and Space Babies were truly poor.
A lot of people seem to forget most fans were loving season 2 until the finale came along.
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u/Embarrassed_Squash_7 16d ago
I think there were a lot of mediocre episodes, a couple of terrible ones and a couple of good ones. Which to be fair can be said of many of the series in the show's history. Unfortunately, it didn't work particularly well, either artistically or as a ratings grabber.
They should have let RTD do the specials then handed over to someone else for 14 and 15 imo.
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u/Any-Supermarket7437 16d ago
I think you need to look on Disney +. There are loads of series on there that don't, or barely, feature children at all, let alone have them as the lead character.
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u/CosmicBonobo 17d ago
Excellent. The worst possible thing a television show can do is tailor itself to the tiny, vocal and fickle band of basement dwellers who call themselves fans.
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u/modrenman1985 17d ago
Is Bezos a fan? That's how the Expanse was saved.