It's been parked in the development equivalent of a Norfolk motel car park for several years now, dogged with will-it/won't-it rumours, but Empire can confirm that not only is the Alan Partridge movie finally happening, it's happening this year and Father Ted alum Declan Lowney will be directing. With any luck, Alan's own Hans Zimmer, Glenn Ponder, will be penning a suitably epic jazz synth soundtrack right now.

Co-writer Armando Iannucci is, of course, currently busy with his Veep duties on HBO, but we used our journalistical wiles to extract some Partridge intel, kicking off with the project's status.

"It’s just about all come together now, so that’ll be shot later in the year," Iannucci told us, confirming that he's taking an executive producer credit. And what of the title? "At the moment it’s 'The Alan Partridge Movie' but that’s just a working title. [The script] is written [but] we’re always rewriting, rewriting and rewriting."

Sitting in the director's chair will be Irishman Lowney, who made the first two seasons of Father Ted as well as A Christmassy Ted, highly auspicious news considering it's one of the greatest things ever filmed. Interestingly, one show not on his CV is I'm Alan Partridge.

According to Iannucci, we'll be seing Partridge on the big screen some time in 2013. In the meantime, he's hard at work bringing another, tantalisingly mysterious comedy to the screen. "We’ve written it," he confirmed, "but it’s a slapstick movie, it’s not political, it’s not satire."

Look out for more on the Veep creator in the July issue of Empire, on sale on May 31.