A few days ago, I attended the press conference for Ricky Gervais’ new film “The Invention of Lying” at the Toronto Film Festival. While you usually have to wait for the stars to arrive, Ricky showed up a few minutes early and when I went to put my recorder down, I managed to ask him a number of questions about his next project with Stephen Merchant called “Cemetery Junction”. If you’re a fan of “Extras” or the British version of “The Office”, Ricky and Stephen Merchant created the shows together and “Cemetery Junction” is the first film they’ve written and directed together.

Anyway, he told me while filming only recently finished, they’ve already done a friends and family screening and it turned out quite well. He also called the movie his “Saturday Night Fever”. For more on the project and his new HBO animated series “The Ricky Gervais Show”, it’s after the jump:

While this brief promo for Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s  upcoming film “Cemetery Junction” tells you absolutely nothing about the film and is slightly misleading because it doesn’t actually star Gervais or Merchant (it stars Christian Cooke, Tom Hughes, and Jack Doolan as three blue-collar friends in a coming-of-age comedy), it does feature Ralph Fiennes.  As Gervais notes, Fiennes–not exactly known for his comedy.  Known more for dramas.  No amusing anecdotes from the set of “Schindler’s List”, sadly.  Nobody putting a little “Hook” lunchbox in the background of one of the concentration camps.  That’s a shame.  I guess “Schindler’s List” isn’t just missing subtlety, but easter eggs as well.

Hit the jump to check out the promo.  “Cemetery Junction” is slated to hit theatres some time next year.

From his official website, writer/director/actor Ricky Gervais has released details about his upcoming film, “Cemetery Junction” which began filming last Tuesday in London.  Co-written and co-directed by Gervais and Stephen Merchant (who also collaborated with Gervais on “The Office” and “Extras”), “Junction” tells the story of being trapped in a small town and dreaming of escape.

In 1970s England, three blue-collar friends, Freddie (Christian Cooke), Bruce (Tom Hughes), and Snork (Jack Doolan), spend their days joking, drinking, fighting and chasing girls.  When Freddie gets a new job as a door-to-door salesman and bumps into his old school sweetheart Julie (Felicity Jones), the gang are forced to make choices that will change their lives for ever.  The lesson of the film: never ever bump into old school sweethearts.  Avoid them at all costs.  In fact, just to be on the safe side, go and shut down your Facebook page.

“Cemetery Junction” also stars Gervais, Ralph Fiennes, Emily Watson, and Matthew Goode.  It’s set to hit theatres sometime in 2010.

There’s a reason that “The Ricky Gervais Show” is the most popular comedy podcast on the Internet: it’s hilarious. The popularity of Gervais and Merchant probably didn’t hurt in getting in noticed, but their endless jabs at co-host Karl Pilkington, who really is the star of the show.  If you’ve never heard the program, all you need to know is that Pilkington is like all of Gervais’ dumbest characters combined.  I secretly suspect that some traits of those characters were based of Pilkington.

Now Variety is reporting that HBO is picking up the series and turning it into 13 half-hour animated episodes set to debut in early 2010.  I can definitely see their conversations lending themselves to animated romps as Pilkington describes bizarre situations and truths that never happened.  Also, as Gervais makes sure to point out in every episode, Pilkington has a “a head like a fucking orange,” so that should be fun for the animators.

This will be Gervais’ third re-teaming with HBO after the network rebroadcast his BBC series “Extras” and aired his comedy special, “Ricky Gervais: Out of England”.  While I anxiously await this series, I’m even more excited for Gervais’ upcoming film, “The Invention of Lying” (formerly known as “This Side of the Truth”) which is slated to come out this fall.