PORTLAND — Bert and I, the celebrated Maine humor albums created by Marshall Dodge and Bob Bryan when they were Yale University students in 1958, may be headed to the big screen.

A Rockport man says he signed an agreement with Bryan, 80, to create new business calling itself Bert and I Company of Maine.

David Lyman, former owner of the Maine Film & Video Workshops in Rockport, said he’s working with TV and movie industry professionals to develop the concept, script and funding for a movie based on the material.

“We’re not just going to visualize the stories that are on the record and in the books,” Lyman said. “We’re going to come up with new stuff. We have to update it to address contemporary issues.”

Lyman’s plans include a radio/stage show, albums, books, a feature length film and a TV series based on the duo that coined the phrase “You can’t get there from here.”

Lyman said he was having dinner with Michael Pressman, a TV producer in New York and Los Angeles, when they concocted the idea to update the Bert and I brand for a contemporary audience.

Pressman, who is co-producer and director for CBS’s “Blue Bloods” and has also directed episodes of “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Law and Order” and “Boston Legal,” had just introduced his children to the Bert and I record and mused about a possible movie and TV series under the iconic brand — provided they could get the copyright.

“I says, I think I know how to do that,” Lyman recalled.

Lyman said he got to know Dodge before he died in 1982, when he was struck by a hit-and-run driver in Hawaii will bicycling. Dodge had taken a course at Lyman’s Maine Film and Video Workshop. Lyman later went on to produce a few live performances of Bert and I, and the two collaborated on the Maine Festival of Arts at Bowdoin College in the late 1970s.

Lyman approached Bryan about buying the rights to Bert and I in 2010. After thinking it over, Bryan signed the deal on Tuesday.

The deal still allows Yarmouth-based Islandport Press to continue distributing classic audio recordings of the duo.

Lyman said he is also working with comedian Tim Sample to put together a stage and radio variety show, similar to National Public Radio’s “Prairie Home Companion.”

The show, which is planned for next winter, would use local talent, pre-recorded video and interviews of fishermen, lumberjacks and the like. It would also be used to scout new talent, he said.

“That will lead to more books and more recordings,” he said. “While that is happening we will be working on developing a screen play and getting it financed.”

Lyman hopes to have a feature length film in production by late summer and early fall of 2014. He expects the film will cost between $3 million to $4 million.

“We think we can do it,” he said. “We think we can do it all in Maine.”

Once he movie has been out for a year, Lyman wants to reach out to TV networks about creating a sitcom that would be similar to “Northern Exposure,” Irish TV’s “Ballykissangel” and the BBC series “Doc Martin.”

“They’re all a lot of characters,” he said.

While the project will modernize the classic series, Lyman said he plans to stay true to the spirit of the original Bert and I humor, especially when it comes to the Maine dialect and world view.

“The Bert and I brand will capture people’s interest — they’ll want to see what it’s about,” he said. “Our job now is to produce very strong storytelling and do it in an authentic, humorous and soulful way.”