Will Ray’s fans follow him to film?

Forget whether “Everybody Loves Raymond” comes back for a ninth season on CBS. Ray Romano, who makes his first big-screen appearance this weekend in “Welcome to Mooseport,” seems as anxious to find out if the box office loves Raymond.

“I have no idea if the TV audience is going to go to the movie,” Romano said Friday. “Some of the most popular characters on TV don’t make that jump.”

“If you look at stand-ups who had TV shows then crossed over, there aren’t too many,” he noted. “You think of Robin Williams but he was a classically trained actor, Tim Allen, Cosby. You look at someone like Tom Hanks who had ‘Bosom Buddies’ but that was only for a couple of years. My character, people have been living with for eight years so it’s hard .... You’ve just got to do it and let the cards fall where they fall.”

Romano wasn’t even seen in his first movie role: He lent his voice to a woolly mammoth in Fox’s 2002 animated “Ice Age.”

His first on-screen project was as part of an ensemble for a yet-to-be-released indie film, “Eulogy” (he filmed his scenes on weekends during taping). From April to July 2003, he filmed Fox’s “Welcome to Mooseport.”

Romano’s character in “Mooseport” (also starring Gene Hackman, Maura Tierney and Marcia Gay Harden) will probably seem familiar. He plays a small-town hardware store owner who runs for mayor against a popular ex-president (Hackman).

“I don’t think I was playing Ray Barone,” Romano said, “but I wasn’t far from him.”