Never Let Me Go's Mark Romanek To Direct Ben Stiller In 'A Parking Ticket'

Early this year /Film broke news of a potential collaboration between director Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo, Never Let Me Go) and Ben Stiller on The Voices, the 2009 Black List film about a man who takes advice from his cat and dog on how to cover up a murder. Looks like about half that report was accurate, as the Romanek project that Stiller is actually attached to star in is not The Voices, but a movie titled A Parking Ticket. Romanek's succinct pitch describes the film beautifully: "Ben Stiller decides to fight an unjust parking ticket and teach his daughter how the system can work and ends up on death row."

Worst Previews caught up to Romanek to ask him about the film he had been working on with Stiller, and ended up finding out about a project that's never before been discussed.

There's this thing with Ben Stiller that Steve Conrad wrote, who is a great writer who wrote 'The Pursuit of Happyness' and 'The Weather Man.' He's a terrific writer, it's called 'A Parking Ticket.' It's a very funny movie. It's a black comedy, but it's quite funny. We're working on the script still, fiddling with it a little bit. I just spoke with Ben the night before last.

A Parking Ticket will probably not be Romanek's next film, as he has an undisclosed project that he's been developing for 15 years that he plans on making his follow-up to Never Let Me Go. He also hopes to move forward on A Cold Case, a film which he detailed the initial downfall of in an interview with /Film.

I was deep into pre-production on a film with Tom Hanks called "A Cold Case" which is based on this stunningly great book by Philip Gourevitch who's a writer for "New Yorker" and has written several non-fiction books. I highly recommend that book. We had issues with the life rights at the last minute that torpedoed that project which was crushing to me. I kind of curled up into a fetal position for six weeks because I was so disappointed.

In Romanek's interview with Worst Previews, he explained that once that single road block is taken care of, the film can finally be made.

The killer in the film is being paroled soon. When he dies, we can make the film. We still hope to make that movie one day.

Picking up on a nice little death wish from Romanek there; though with the luck he's had, I can't say that I blame him. He was hard at work on A Million Little Pieces and The Wolfman before those projects fell apart, too. You can read more about the hurdles that Mark Romanek encountered with these films in his interview with /Film.