05/10/2006

Peter Howitt, the director of Sliding Doors and Johnny English [+see also:
trailer
film profile], will star along with Saffron Burrows, Sean Pertwee and Tom Conti in his new film Dangerous Parking, which started shooting this week.

Howitt, who first made a name for himself as a TV actor and in London’s West End theatres, already had small cameos in the four films he has directed, but this will mark his first starring role since becoming a director in 1998. Howitt is also producing the film, based on his own adaptation of the eponymous, 1999 novel by Stuart Browne, just before he died of cancer.

“Dangerous Parking is a rebel yell from deep within the soul of a man, told in extreme Technicolor, and at breakneck, breath-taking speed, just like his highly cinematic life,“ says Howitt. “It is in turns tragic, brutal, sad, hopeful, hopeless, romantic and painfully funny.”

Howitt plays Noah Arkwright, a filmmaker and former alcoholic who has experienced too much. He’s lived life to the full with sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, but cancer forces him not only to evaluate his past, but to wonder if salvation lies in his love for his musician wife.

Howitt and his production partner in Flaming Pie Films, Richard Johns, financed the film independently through private investors (including Executive Producer Hani Farsi).

International sales are being handled by Velvet Octopus, founded earlier this year by Simon Crowe, former head of sales at Capitol Films and Icon Entertainment International. Velvet Octopus will start pre-selling Dangerous Parking at the AFM alongside three other titles: the CGI movie Shark Bait (currently on release in Korea), Miamiland, a black comedy by Michael Brandt, and Oliver Parker’s The Little White Horse, the latter two which are in pre-production.