Chris O’Dowd writing feature, hopes to continue to work with Baby Cow

Hot property Chris O’Dowd, whose writing and shooting schedule is going into overdrive, is writing a feature comedy set against the backdrop of Ireland’s recent boom and bust economy.

“I’m working on a script about the Irish boom and bust,” O’Dowd told Screen’s sister publication Broadcast. “Because that economic problem was such a well-known case I think the story will have international appeal”.

“It’s about a countryside chancer who buys properties and makes his way up through the market and ends up in government before corrupting it,” he said. “It would take place over a 15 year period.”

After recently working with Baby Cow’s Steve Coogan and Henry Normal on Sky 1 comedy Moone Boy – which has already been recommissioned, O’Dowd said he is keen to work with the UK outfit on the feature. “I’d like them to be involved,” he said.

The semi-autobiographical Moone Boy, co-written by O’Dowd and Nick Vincent Murphy, focuses on a young boy’s life growing up in Ireland in the late 1980s/early 1990s. Steve Coogan and Johnny Vegas are among the guest appearances in the series.

O’Dowd recently starred in Judd Apatow’s comedy This is 40 and believes there is still a gap in the UK feature market for Apatow style comedies: “I do think the Judd Apatow area is something the UK hasn’t cracked. We’ve got a lot of people doing TV comedy but that hasn’t transferred onto the big screen yet. TV comedians haven’t gone on to make really good things in the US…But the success of The Inbetweeners film has spurred me on and goes to prove that there is an audience out there.”

O’Dowd recently shot Big Talk feature Cuban Fury and is also working on an US sitcom about a group of men who meet in a weight-loss clinic, commissioned by NBC.

After appearing in UK TV hit The IT Crowd, he shot to global fame after his performance in Paul Feig’s smash Bridesmaids and more recently starred in Wayne Blair’s The Sapphires, which was picked up by TWC in Cannes.