A Mighty Boosh Movie - With Robert Smith From The Cure?

One of the best BBC sitcoms of recent years is The Mighty Boosh, created by and starring Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding and directed by Paul King. Originating as a stage show – essentially stand up comedy with theatrical elaborations – then undergoing a typical Britcom rite of passage on radio, Boosh became an instant TV cult with it's first airing in 2004. I reckon the show has notably improved not just once but twice with the advent of each subsequent season. I like shows that keep getting better and wish there were more of them.

Boosh is effectively a flat share comedy (though that flat has also been a zoo, dessert island or magic shop as well as a flat) which takes determinedly off the wall dives into pop surrealism. It's effortlessly the hippest show on the BBC. For the last year now a feature film version of the show has been in development, which seems to mean Fielding and Barratt have been writing away while Paul King has been shooting his debut feature, the Boosh-less Bunny & The Bull. More on that beyond the break – as well as a video with some of the Boosh boys talking about their desired casting for the big screen episode.

Speaking at the NME awards – where The Mighty Boosh won Best TV Show – Noel Fielding talked about his dream casting for the movie spin-off. In a bent up Booshy version of Johnny Depp luring in Keith Richards for a turn as Jack Sparrow's dad, Fielding is after Robert Smith, front man of The Cure, to play his uncle. As long as Smith isn't asked to carry too much screentime, then brilliant, but if they're asking too much of the powder-faced raggle-barnet... then I still need to be convinced.

Click here to watch a video of the conversation.

Steve Coogan is one of the show's producers at Baby Cow and it's expected, if not practically guaranteed, that he'll make at least a cameo in the movie too.

Director King's debut movie Bunny & The Bull is pitched as a comedy road movie set entirely in a flat. Quiet Earth have run a series of stills from the film, in which the Boosh vibe is readily apparent, as well as an official synopsis that sounds promising enough:

Stephen Turnbull hasn't been outside in months, and when he finds his mind hurtling back to the disastrous trek around Europe he undertook with his friend Bunny a catalogue of adventures unfold. Stephen's flat becomes the springboard for an extraordinary odyssey through lands made up of snapshots and souvenir replica landmarks within his imagination. Bunny & The Bull is a touching and beautiful journey to the end of the room.

Definitely a touch of Vincenzo Natali's Nothing there. I hope it's even one half as good.

In the past, King has often fallen back on old Michel Gondry tricks but I'm hopeful he's gonna flash a few of his own special moves from here on out as his budgets and timescales expand.

As a footnote, it isn't official that King will direct the Boosh movie but he's been such a part of the team so far, it'd be a real head scratcher to see him left out.