Neil Gaiman is hoping that Robert Zemeckis will finally agree to adapt Fermata for the big screen. Zemeckis directed the film adaptation of one of Gaiman's other works Beowulf, which is due for release this year. Gaiman hopes that the mix of techniques required to make Beowulf, will convince Zemeckis that Fermata could be done and done well.

MTV Movies Blog has the interview where Gaiman says:

I hope very, very much that ‘The Fermata’ is going to come back to life,I was very proud of it. It’s a very strange script - very extreme. Very odd...I don’t know that we would use a lot of motion capture in it, because I think one of the things that really would make it work as an experience is that you’re watching time-stopping. And watching time-stopping would probably be cooler in the real world, if we could get it to work.

The novel is about an office temp who can stop time at will. However he uses this power for rather suspect purposes, mainly undressing women. Gaiman goes onto say that he wrote his adaptation of Nicholson Baker’s sci-fi novel for Zemeckis. It would seem he's waiting for him to say the time is right. Zemeckis perhaps wants to make sure that the stopping of time could be portrayed realistically before agreeing to it. We'll have to wait and see if Beowulf has convinced him.