Boof! Eat my role: Partridge bounces back with film deal

Alan Partridge, played by Steve Coogan, will likely be hitting cinemas in 2013 (BBC)

"Back of the net!" "Kiss my face!" "Jurassic Park!" The disclosure by comedy writer Armando Iannucci that Alan Partridge is finally to have his own film shot later this year prompted a wave of triumphant Partridgeisms.

The film has been mooted for many years both by Iannucci and Steve Coogan, who will inevitably be playing the Norfolk-based broadcaster when he makes it on to the big screen, probably some time in 2013.

"It's just about all come together now, so that'll be shot later in the year," Iannucci, pictured, said in an interview with Empire magazine. "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."

Iannucci and Coogan have written the script with Peter Baynham, the co-writer of the Sacha Baron Cohen film Brüno. It will be directed by Declan Lowney, who is best known for his work on Father Ted and Little Britain but has previously worked with Coogan on a short film featuring the characters Paul and Pauline Calf.

The Alan Partridge film has been in the development pipeline for so long that it is almost as if the great man himself had been handling the negotiations. "Give me another series, you sh*t," is how he once implored a commissioning editor.

Both Iannucci and Coogan have already enjoyed considerable success in films. Iannucci directed and co-wrote the Oscar-nominated In the Loop, the dark comedy that grew out of the BBC political satire The Thick of It. Coogan also appeared in In the Loop but is better known for his performances in 24 Hour Party People (where he played the impresario Tony Wilson) and A Cock and Bull Story (where he played Tristram Shandy).