Ever since last year when rumors started that there would be a Doctor Who movie helmed by Harry Potter director David Yates, showrunner Steven Moffatt has been denying those rumors. Each time he’s a little less politically correct than the last denial.

In a recent chat with EW, Steven Moffat is his clearest yet on a Doctor Who film project.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What’s the word with the Doctor Who film?

STEVEN MOFFAT: There isn’t a film. That was all some weird fantasy going on somewhere. Look, we hopefully will do a Doctor Who film someday. It will be absolutely run by the Doctor Who production office in Cardiff. It will feature the same Doctor as on television. It will not be a rebooted continuity. All of that would be insane. So that whole proposal was not true, did not happen. I can say that with authority because, as far as the BBC is concerned, I’m the voice of Doctor Who. So if I say it, it’s true. The BBC own Doctor Who and, for the moment, I run it for them. So I can assure you definitively that was all nonsense — not the idea of making a film, we’d love to make a film, but the idea of a rebooted continuity, a different Doctor. That’s writing the book on how to destroy a franchise. You don’t behave like that with it. Not ever.

Moffat was no less vehement when asked directly about David Yates.

EW: So is David Yates not involved?

SM: I don’t think he was ever signed to it. I never signed him, so he’s not. But I think he’s [expressed] an interest in doing it and he’s a very fine director and I think he’d certainly be someone that would be on the list for directing such a project. I’m a big fan of his. But the project as he describes it would not happen. It was all a bit more off the cuff than it seemed to be.

It really sounds as if Moffat is getting quite irritated with these rumors. They aren’t helped when Yates, as recently as a March press conference, confirmed several times over that he is in fact signed to do the project.

Why do you think Moffat and Yates seem to be on entirely different pages on this issue?