Ok so hopes of a Red Dwarf movie were always going to be slim when even the BBC wouldn’t support the premier sci-fi comedy. But co-creator Doug Naylor may decide to go another way with the show.

In the interview with Red Dwarf fan site Gannymede and Titan, he said: ‘Basically, what I don’t want to happen is for Red Dwarf: The Movie never to be seen. Because that’s just bloody stupid.

‘We have done a lot of work on it, and it would have been a great movie. So it’s, “Okay, what are the options?”

‘One option is the stage show, one option is an animated movie… and in some ways, maybe that would be more attractive to financiers because you could even, if they wanted, dangle the carrot of being able to re-voice it into Bulgarian or Romanian or whatever… if that was a way they wanted to go.

‘But we haven’t actually decided which way we’re going to go.’

On the financing problems he lays the blame directly at the BBC’s door. First they refused to help fund the film, and now they will not buy the rights to screen it on TV, thus making potential financiers rather jittery.

Aside from the film Naylor is also in discussions with an animation company about the possibility of creating an animated Red Dwarf show. Recently scenes had been redone in said medium for mobile phone downloads.