Doctor Who Turned Me Down, Says Drive Director

Nicolas Winding Refn reveals he offered to helm Who , and would love to direct Blake’s 7

Here’s a throwaway quote from an interview that definitely needs further investigation if we ever get to interview the guy (which we should, since he’s currently developing a remake of Logan’s Run) . Talking to Shortlist about the DVD and Blu-ray release of the critically-acclaimed hit movie Drive , Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn dropped this little bombshell:

“I would have loved to direct Doctor Who but they didn’t want me — they turned me down last year. Maybe if they revive Blake’s 7 I could do that. I love it. It’s great. That could be fun to update.”

How great would that have been? The director of Drive and Bronson giving us his version of “The Doctor’s Wife”. Or imagine what he would have done with the opening scenes of “A Good Man Goes To War”.

Presumably there were scheduling or cost issues that came into play. Okay, Refn hadn’t become the big Hollywood director he is now at the point when he would have been in negotiations but with films like Bronson and Pusher under his belt he was still a bigger name than most of the directors on the show. On the other hand he did have TV experience ( Miss Marple , The Chosen ) and US shows like ER have had big-name guest directors (Quentin Tarantino).

So, we’ll have to file that one under, “What if…?” and hope that one day he gets to make a movie version of Blake’s 7 when the rights become available.

Dave Golder
Freelance Writer

Dave is a TV and film journalist who specializes in the science fiction and fantasy genres. He's written books about film posters and post-apocalypses, alongside writing for SFX Magazine for many years.