‘The Road’ gets a release date

John Hillcoat’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” has been a big question mark for film-goers ever since it was yanked from the 2008 awards season.  I heard at the time (second hand) that the film was in disarray and needed to be “completely taken apart.”  Brian Kinsley, you may recall, reviewed the screenplay (essentially a cut-and-paste job) for us back in September.

Whatever needed to happen seems to have happened as I’ve been hearing great things here and there, mainly for Viggo Mortensen’s lead performance.  And now, according to The Weinstein Company’s website, the film has finally nailed down a 2009 release date for the film: October 16.

This is great positioning if TWC/Dimension is to take the genre film route with marketing, and from what I’ve heard, that would be the smart play.  Two weeks before Halloween and decent exposure in the middle of the awards season gives the studio some leverage on where to take it.  Audience and especially critical approval will tell the tale soon enough.

In case you missed it, Guy wrote up a recently revealed gallery of conceptual art work for the film earlier this week.  I’m most looking forward to Nick Cave’s work with Warren Ellis on the film’s score, as their collaboration on “The Assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford” in 2007 was absolute magic.  Cave talked about his work in the film industry with the LA Times last year.