Gervais's next movie set at insurance firm

LONDON, Aug. 18 (UPI) -- Ricky Gervais, the British creator of the hit TV comedy "The Office," says he is working on a quirky movie about workers at an insurance company.

The British newspaper The Independent says Gervais has finished writing the script for "The Men at the Pru," about two 20-something clerks at the Prudential Building Society set in the 1970s environment of dull suburban Reading, England.

The newspaper says the idea began as a television series, but later changed into a feature-length movie and is to begin filming next year. Gervais and his producing partner, Stephen Merchant, visited the Pru's London headquarters in February and gave assurances to executives that the company would not be portrayed in the same negative light that the fictional Dunder-Mifflin Paper Co. is in "The Office."

"They came in to look through our old archived stuff and Merchant then came in separately and went though the archives in more detail," Prudential spokesman Jon Bunn told The Independent.

Gervais said on his Web site that the movie would be set "in the 1970s in a seaside town the sexual revolution never hit."