Since the end of the run of Six Feet Under, Ball has undertaken several other projects. He optioned the screen rights to Alicia Erian's disturbing novel Towelhead, the tale of Jasira, a thirteen-year-old girl. Denied emotional support from either her cruel father or her vindictive divorced mother, she is desperate for affection and thus only too vulnerable to the advances of men intrigued by her burgeoning sexuality. Ball wrote the screenplay and is directing the film, as yet untitled, which is expected to be released in 2007.

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Ball has returned to the theater with All That I Ever Will Be (2007). Set in Los Angeles, the play follows the development of a relationship between Omar, an immigrant from the Middle East who has a day job at a chain store and hustles at night, and Dwight, one of his clients, who comes from wealth and squanders much of his money on drugs. Charles Isherwood of the New York Times called All That I Ever Will Be "a slick entry in the sick-soul-of-society genre, concerning the futile search for connection among characters who crave intimacy even as they build cinder-block walls around their damaged hearts."

Ball also has another television series in the works. True Blood, slated to air on HBO in the fall of 2007, will be based on the vampire novels of Charlaine Harris, which are set in Bon Temps, Louisiana, a fictional town outside of Shreveport.

In Harris's books, vampires, thanks to the development of a synthetic product called True Blood, no longer need to prey on humans and so have "come out of the coffin," assert themselves as a visible part of society, and become financially successful, notably as the owners of trendy bars since the working hours fit their necessarily nocturnal habits.

Ball has discouraged comparisons to Anne Rice's New Orleans vampire novels, saying of Harris's work, "It's not Gothic in the way that Rice is. It's contemporary rural America, white trashy, very funny, and real scary."

He added that "vampires are a great metaphor for minority groups that struggle for rights and recognition, but also for Republicans, in that they're vicious and bloodthirsty and will destroy anything that gets in their way."

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American television sitcoms have consistently reflected the presence of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people, often in distorted and stereotyped ways, but occasionally in ways that acknowledge our humanity and complexity.

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