Have I got a second series?

The first mega-budget effects movie of the year hits multiplexes this week, in the shape of Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. Playing Hades, king of the underworld, in that movie is Steve Coogan, and during publicity for the film the British actor has indicated a decision is imminent on whether his most best-known TV role will finally be receiving the big-screen treatment.

No, we're not talking about Ernest Moss. Nor Gareth Cheeseman. We speak instead of light-entertainment dinosaur Alan Partridge, whose most recent TV series screened on the BBC back in 2002. And it was the BBC who quizzed Coogan about the possibility of an Alan Partridge movie while the comic was promoting Percy Jackson. Coogan admitted that it was currently “kind of make or break” for a potential Partridge film, noting that, “in a month it'll be very clear whether we're going to do it or not.”

A movie project centred on Norwich's most (in)famous son has been in the works for some time now, with one suggestion being that it would involve the hapless Partridge finding his latest show biz comeback being disrupted by a terrorist siege. In 2007 The Times quoted Coogan as having already given some consideration as to how his sweater-sporting alter-ego might attempt to deal with Islamic extremists: “Your position is that you want to destroy the West. The West's position is that, broadly speaking, they don't want to be destroyed. Is there a midway between those two positions that could satisfy us both? Rather than suicide bombing, you achieve so much more with a sternly worded letter.”

Although that terrorism storyline is surely far less likely to see the light of day now that Coogan's old Day Today collaborator Chris Morris has completed his own jihad satire, Four Lions (which played at Sundance two weeks ago), the Tropic Thunder actor is apparently keen that Partridge scripting stalwarts (and now Oscar-nominated screenwriters both) Peter Baynham and Armando Iannucci are involved in any potential movie. However speaking to The Daily Telegraph back in 2005, Iannucci seemed to suggest that he had his fill of the character, citing the peculiar writing process for the I'm Alan Partridge TV show as being a particularly objectionable affair: “Steve's great talent is to improvise fully formed in character, so it felt like I was stuck in a room for 18 months with Alan Partridge. Steve never physically writes anything, so I was the one at the typewriter trying to turn it into something coherent... Steve wants to do an Alan Partridge film, but I couldn't bear to go through that again... the idea of spending two more years in a room with that voice is more than I can take.” However time seems to have worked some of its like, well mad healing shit in the intervening period, with the In the Loop director today indicating via Twitter that he is interested in the prospect of penning a cinematic outing for Partridge:

'Thought I might add fuel to rumour-fire by saying been spending last few days plotting a Partridge story.'

Alan Partridge has endured a decidedly varied fictional career, having gone from sports reporter, to chat show host, to late-night radio DJ, to the presenter of military-based quiz show Skirmish on cable channel UK Conquest. Last year Coogan told Empire that a Partridge movie would shoot in the States, indicating that cameos from some of Coogan's Hollywood buddies could well be on the cards (this writer's favourite section of Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes was the bit with Coogan and Doctor Octopus himself, Alfred Molina). Previously, we have seen decent small-screen comedies struggle to birth equivalently decent filmic incarnations, with The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse merely baffling the four people who saw it, and even The Simpsons Movie running out of comic puff long before the closing credits. Coogan seems keen to avoid such a fate for Partridge, remarking that, “we're not going to do it unless we think we can do something really good.” But then he would say that, wouldn't he?

One Coogan project that is definitely going to make it in front of the cameras is The Trip, which is not a remake of the Corman/Fonda/Nicholson/Hopper/Dern low-budget psychedelic oddity from 1967 but rather a reunion for Coogan, Rob Brydon and director Michael Winterbottom (whose ears are probably still ringing for the hoo-ha his Jim Thompson adaptation The Killer Inside Me caused at Sundance). The trio previously combined on the excellent A Cock and Bull Story, although there are not too many details available about their new collaboration, aside from Brydon blogging that it will film in the Lake District this month.

Acknowledgement to The Guardian for some of the sources in this story.