In an announcement that threatens to yoke together two of the more impassioned fan communities active today, it was revealed that Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson may helm an episode of long-running sci-fi series Doctor Who—maybe. The possibility came to light in an interview with Doctor Who head writer and executive producer Steven Moffat, who said of Jackson:
“He’s still incredibly busy on The Hobbit. I’ve spoken to him face to face, and he would like to do one. He accepts that there’s no money and that there’s no time, and it would have to be when he’s available – and I don’t think he’s even been available enough to answer our emails of late! I think it will probably happen at some point.
As Moffat implies, Jackson is still tied up with prepping the final film in The Hobbit trilogy, The Battle Of Five Armies, in advance of its release this December. Having spent the last several years of his professional life spending hundreds of millions of dollars making fantastical creatures battle each other in otherworldly settings, it would be interesting to see how Jackson would adjust to doing something similar on a far smaller scale. Jackson was involved with a number of smaller, subtler, quirkier projects in his early days, so it could be a good fit.
Also at issue is where an episode of Doctor Who directed by New Zealand’s own Peter Jackson would be filmed, with Jackson preferring to do it on his home turf, and Moffat preferring to keep the production of one of the most British shows in history on the British Isles. Still, Jackson holds a lot of sway—as Moffat notes, he “owns New Zealand”—so there may be some verdant rolling hills in the backgrounds of Jackson’s episode should it ever actually happen.