Ben Stiller as frontrunner for Mark Romanek's THE VOICES
Here's a 2009 Black Listed script that looks to be getting its legs. In THR's news break that The Guardian and Dead Zone writer-producer Michael R. Perryhas been hired to script the Paranormal Activity sequel, it included a little blurb that Perry's spec script for The Voices, which landed the third slot in the list of Hollywood's most liked unproduced screenplays, is being set up though Doug Davison and Roy Lee's Vertigo Entertainment (Quarantine, The Uninvited).
Now /Film reports, that Mark Romanek has been developing the project as a potential directing vehicle, and that though still in early days, the One Hour Photo director has Ben Stiller as the front runner to take on the lead role of Jerry.
Here is the premise for The Voices:
Jerry, a schizophrenic worker at a bathtub factory, accidentally kills an attractive woman from accounting. While trying to cover his bloody tracks, Jerry starts taking advice from his talking (and foul-mouthed) cat and dog.
Though the character is written as 29, the script can be easily tailored. It would be a much different role for Stiller, who looks to already have been branching out of his "comedic comfort-zone" with the upcoming film Greenberg.
The dark tone aside, the movie isn't too much of a departure in the sense that Stiller has already done his fair share of talking and fighting with animals in the Night At The Museum movies, and on the other side of it, voicing an animal in the Madagascar franchise.
With the cat and dog, Mr. Whiskers and Bosco, playing the angel-and-demon on the shoulder-types, cinematically it will work more like (according to the script):
Just like in Babe or Beverly Hills Chihuahua, except that Mr. Whiskers is a son of a bitch.
The cat and dog voice roles have yet to be cast. I just hope they go more Spike Jonze's
Where The Wild Things Are
, and less cartoony with the voices. Either way, I'm all for Stiller get his schizophrenic quirk on.
What do you think of Ben Stiller possibly starring in THE VOICES?