A-HAAAAAAAA! It's a good few years since we've seen Steve Coogan's pringle-sweatered, Toblerone-addicted cringetastic horror Alan Partridge on any kind of screen, but that could be about to change. For Coogan has exclusively revealed to us that the long-mooted **Alan Partridge: The Movie **(title TBC) is finally (almost) underway.
It's yet to be written, but, says Coogan, "we're doing a deal right now - I can't say who with - and there'll probably be an official announcement in the next couple of months."
Partridge: The Movie has been on the cards since at least 2005, with whispers of a script about an Al-Qaeda siege, shelved in the name of good taste after the London bombings. Whether any of those original ideas have survived is uncertain, but Coogan seems clear that we're looking at a US production. Which rules out the possibility of a Sue Cook cameo, it would seem.
"We're doing it in the States, but I'm not going to try and Americanise it," explains Coogan. "I wouldn’t try to do the same observational stuff here that I do in Britain. I’m not going to come over here and go 'right, now I’m going to try and invent five different characters who are all American', because I’m not steeped in American culture. It wouldn’t work. I’m so ingrained in British culture that for me to observe the minutiae of being British in all its different ways is very easy. I couldn’t claim to do that here, and if I did they’d end up being caricatures. It’ll be a British fool/idiot character in a movie that should appeal to everybody."
Coogan hopes that shooting will start at "the back end of next year", and the script will be written in between his appearances in Michael Winterbottom's road movie The Trip (co-starring Rob Brydon) and an untitled Justin Theroux project for HBO.
When that official announcement happens, we'll be the first to tell you. But for the time being, let's rejoice in the knowledge that Norwich's greatest son is going to get the big-screen outing he deserves. Altogether now: "Dan! Dan! Dan! Dan! Dan! Dan! Dan! Dan! Dan!..."