Steve Coogan has told interviewers that a big-screen version of Alan Partridge is set to shoot next year. Speaking at the Tribeca film festival, where a feature-length version of his BBC series The Trip is screening, Coogan said Borat's Pete Baynham and In the Loop's Armando Iannucci were currently working alongside him on the screenplay.

"We left it behind for a while, but we came back to it because we got a few ideas," Coogan told The Playlist. "We're writing it right now, going to shoot it next year. Don't know who will direct it."

Partridge began life on the BBC Radio 4 comedy programme On the Hour in 1991, graduating to the series' TV iteration The Day Today in 1994. He also had his own show, Knowing Me, Knowing You ... with Alan Partridge on Radio 4 and that series also transferred to TV in 1994.

Iannucci refuted suggestions that the new film might be set – Borat-style – in the US. "We don't see Alan, for example getting Simon Cowell's spot on American Idol and going over there. That's too good for Alan,' he said. "Alan's future is always brighter in his head than it is in the real world."

He later tweeted: "The Partridge news is that we've now agreed a story for the film. It's NOT Alan goes to America."

The Playlist said the film would be set in Norwich, the city where Partridge was working during his last TV outing, I'm Alan Partridge, two series of which screened in 1997 and 2002. The DJ then worked for the fictional Radio Norwich, but may be forced to find new employment this time around: on 29 June 2006, a new radio station for Norwich, owned by the Tindle Radio Group, launched under the name of 99.9 Radio Norwich.