Listen to part one and part two of the event from The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival, where the announcement was made. This podcast contains strong language.

The team behind the television comedy The Thick of It are training their withering satirical glare on the diplomatic horse-trading between Britain and America on the eve of a war.

However, unlike their expletive-strewn, award-laden BBC series about the corrosive effect of spin on modern politics, In The Loop will be a feature-length comedy for the big screen.

Armando Iannucci, who was the driving force behind a succession of modern television classics including The Day Today and I’m Alan Partridge before he co-wrote, produced and directed The Thick of It, announced the project at The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival.

“I’m working on an idea to look at the lives of people in the Foreign Office and the US State Department in the build up to a war,” he said.

“It will be my first feature [as a director]. I’ve wanted to do a film for ages but I have always held off. I didn’t want to make it just for the sake of making a film. I’ve held off until I had the right idea.”

Tony Roche, Jesse Armstrong and Simon Blackwell, the co-writers of The Thick of It, are working with him on the project, which BBC Films hopes to release in cinemas in late 2008. Script development is at an early stage and no casting decisions have been made.

The aim is not to make “The Thick of It – The Movie”, Iannucci emphasised, but fans of the show will be encouraged by his suggestion that it might “include characters from The Thick of It or maybe people who have appeared in it but in different roles.”

Although there are currently more than 20 films about the war against terrorism in cinemas or in development, the plot will not mention the Iraq conflict and could equally address a war against Iran, he added. “We haven’t decided who to have a war on yet.”

Iannucci, 43, grew up in Glasgow and toyed with becoming a Roman Catholic priest before deciding to study English at Oxford University. He made his mark on the world of comedy producing Radio 4’s seminal news spoof, On The Hour, in 1991, which fostered the talents of Steve Coogan, Chris Morris, Stewart Lee, Patrick Marber and Richard Herring.

The show transferred to television as The Day Today, which introduced a wider audience to the show’s feckless sports presenter, Alan Partridge (played by Coogan).

Iannucci subsequently co-wrote, produced and directed Knowing Me, Knowing You and I’m Alan Partridge, which established Coogan’s character with his Pringle sweater, love of Wings (“the band the Beatles could have been”) and consistently unforgivable behaviour, as a comic monster in the tradition of Basil Fawlty.

The Thick of It premiered on BBC Four in 2005. Shot in a naturalistic, loosely rehearsed style it chronicled the miserable struggle of a Cabinet minister (played by Chris Langham) to retain his integrity in the face of a relentless barrage of spin and shifting political loyalties.

Plans to expand on the original six episodes have been hampered by Langham’s arrest in connection with a child pornography investigation. In August he was found guilty of making indecent photographs of a child and jailed for ten months. In his absence two one-hour specials have been made, bringing the show’s fictional Westminster up to date by introducing a new prime minister. Iannucci said that he was intending to make another series.

Explore Film

• Film Reviews

• Trailers

• DVD

• London Film Festival

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010