‘The Road’ May Detour Towards 2009
Post-production delays may torpedo The Road’s chances of opening in 2008. The film, starring Viggo Mortensen and based on Cormac McCarthy’s acclaimed novel, was originally scheduled for a November 14, but has been slipped to December and if the work is not completed may miss the year entirely.
The story, directed by John Hillcoat, features Mortensen as a father taking his son across a post-apocalyptic American landscape. The novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2006 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. In June, Entertainment Weekly named The Road the best book, fiction or non-fiction, of the past 25 years.
As noted in The Hollywood Reporter, given that last year’s No Country for Old Men, based on a another McCarthy novel, took the Best Picture at the Academy Awards and Mortensen, now on screen in Apaloosa, received an acting nomination for Eastern Promises, The Weinstein Company had pinned similar hopes for this feature.
Harvey Weinstein will determine the current status of post-production and his execs will make a final decision today. Meantime, hedging his bets, Weinstein has started the publicity machine for December’s The Reader, which may take pressure off The Road.