Steve Coogan's Alan Partridge will return for a big screen sequel and a new series on Sky, including a Coast-style spoof, its makers have confirmed.
Henry Normal, co-founder of Coogan's production company Baby Cow, said a sequel to the fictional Norfolk DJ's film debut, last year's Alpha Papa, was in the pipeline, along with a new series for Sky Atlantic, where Partridge moved to in 2012 having previously been on the BBC.
"We are planning a sequel [to Alpha Papa], yes, that will be great," Normal told the Guardian.
"We are also looking at doing more Mid Morning Matters and another Sky special, a little bit like Coast with Alan Partridge, except I don't think he goes out of Norfolk.
"I think it's things of interest in Norfolk, that's the general theme."
Normal added: "We start writing now. I think we make it at the end of summer."
Documentary series Coast, going around the coastline of Britain and originally fronted by Nicholas Crane, began on the BBC in 2005.
After the second series of I'm Alan Partridge aired on BBC2 in 2002, Coogan returned to the character eight years later with a Foster's funded online series, Alan Partridge's Mid Morning Matters.
The series later transferred to Sky Atlantic, along with a pair of specials, Alan Partridge: Welcome to the Places of My Life, and Alan Partridge on Open Books with Martin Bryce, talking about Partridge's spoof (and best-selling) autobiography.
"I'm Alan Partridge was so well received, to make the next series you really had to find a way of coming at it in a different way," recalled Normal, speaking after he appeared at Advertising Week Europe in London on Wednesday.
"It was great to do something on the internet which was only 11 minutes long. We did some specials for Sky, which again gave it a different life.
"Steve wanted to do other things. You do get with Alan, if they are sitting in a room long enough, they do get 'Alan mad'. Alanageddon."
Normal said his company had approached the BBC with the 2012 series adapted from the Foster's funded programmes, but they wanted to make something different.
"Obviously the BBC has been involved with Partridge and we did go to see the BBC, but they said they didn't want a second series, they wanted something different.
"Steve said no, I want to do this as a second series and luckily we went over to Sky and Stuart Murphy and Lucy [Lumsden] said fantastic, what else have you got?"
Partridge's well received (and long-awaited) big screen debut, Alpha Papa, featured the staff of Partridge's Norfolk broadcaster, North Norfolk Digital, taken hostage by a disgruntled colleague, played by Colm Meaney, leading to an unlikely gun-toting finale on Cromer pier.
Baby Cow, whose TV credits include The Trip, Gavin and Stacey, Nighty Night and the Mighty Boosh, is also making a biopic of tennis star turned fashion icon, Fred Perry.
Normal used his appearance at the conference to urge advertisers to do more to fund television programming.
He said broadcasters should do more to embrace product placement and ad-funded content, flagging up the producer's new animated football comedy for ITV4, Warren United, as an example of where it could work.
"It is being done very aggressively in cinema, but TV is quite reticent," Normal told the conference.
"If you look at ITV, at the moment the only product placement they've really got is in Coronation Street. It's very limited. They are afraid of upsetting people I think. We've done three ad-funded shows in 14 years. In the next 14 years I'd love all our shows to be funded by ads."
Coogan's other recent big-screen outing, Philomena, which he also co-wrote, has just passed the $100m (£60m) worldwide box office mark, Normal added.
"I haven't seen a penny of it, but [its US distributor] Harvey Weinstein is very happy with it, apparently."
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