Alan Partridge: The Movie?

Jurassic Park! Steve Coogan has revealed that he’s working on a film based on cult comedy character Alan Partridge.

“Yeah, we are planning on making a movie. We’re talking at the moment. What it is we’re not quite sure,” Coogan told Radio One’s Edith Bowman. “But yes, there are plans afoot to make a film.”

He wouldn’t reveal anything about the storyline, though he admitted that something had been worked out.

Partridge, for those few, poor souls unfamiliar with the man, the voice the legend, first came about as a bumbling sports reporter on Radio 4’s news satire On The Hour, led by Chris Morris, which morphed into TV news-gasm The Day Today.

When Partridge proved popular as a character, Coogan, along with writers Armando Iannucci, Patrick Marber and a host of others, spun him off into demented chat show spoof Knowing Me, Knowing You.

And following a spectacular meltdown for the character during the show’s Christmas special (Knowing Yule, natch), he was reduced to working for a local Norfolk radio station, as chronicled across two series of I’m Alan Partridge.

We’re in two minds about this one, and while we’d happily snap up more Partridge, films based on British TV characters can be hit and miss at best.

Coogan at least seems aware of the dangers: “That’s just something you need to be aware of. You need to be aware of that and it might mean you readdress the character, make him slightly subtler or build up to it in a different way.

“But that’s certainly something that’s going to be on our minds but I think Alan is complex enough to sustain something longer.”

Here’s hoping it works – and that they get Iannucci (who’s seeing success with In The Loop) back to help write and possibly direct…

[Source: Radio One, via /Film]

Do you want an Alan Partridge movie? Or do you think it’d ruin the character? Speak your brains!