Back in January, Jennifer Saunders said her New Year's resolution was to get the long talked about Absolutely Fabulous movie made. Impressively, that seems to have been the motivator she needed, since she's just revealed that development on the film is now well underway{
"I didn’t do it for a while," says Saunders, "because I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be awful if it was awful’. But now we’re all so old... Joanna [Lumley] says, ‘Do it before we all die'. There is a plot and that’s the miracle. It involves all the main characters and virtually everyone that’s ever been in the series, all those characters and we’re in London and sometimes we might go to the South of France, I’m hoping. I’m waiting for the budget. It could be anywhere. If it’s a big budget it will be the Bahamas. I’ve got another deadline on May 8... and then we’ll probably do it in the autumn.”
Last we heard, the film was going by the title Edina & Patsy, named for the hard-partying and responsibility-averse PR guru and her booze-happy best pal, played by Lumley. It isn't actually clear who is number-crunching the budget and setting Saunders' deadlines, but it's hard to imagine the BBC isn't a large part of the mix.
Uprooting a sitcom's cast to an exotic location is a well-worn trope of British TV-to-movie spin-offs, from Holiday On The Buses to Are You Being Served? to Kevin & Perry Go Large. Hopefully Ab-Fab can rise above those dubious precedents...