The actor told The Sun in an interview in tomorrow’s TV Magazine: “I’m on a break for a couple of months while I’m in Detroit making How To Catch A Monster. We come back and shoot the Christmas special over the summer, then we go on to the next series, which will either start filming at the end of this year or at the start of 2014.”

Showrunner Steven Moffat announced at the BAFTA Television Awards in London earlier this week that Series 8 is “absolutely, definitely confirmed. It is real and it’s happening – it’s [taking up] most of my time at the moment.”

Series 7 concludes tomorrow with ‘The Name of the Doctor’ at 7pm on BBC One.

Moffat recently told CultBox: “It’d be fair to say ‘the 50th starts here’. It begins. It’s quite a dark episode; it’s quite a serious episode. You’ll start to see the Doctor enter a phase of his life that’s going to change things.”

> Catch up on all the 50th Anniversary Special news and rumours so far in our summary.

Are you happy that Matt Smith is staying for Series 8? Let us know below…

> Order Series 7 Part 2 on DVD on Amazon.

> Buy Series 7 Part 1 on DVD on Amazon.

Watch the Series 7 Part 2 trailer…