The Road goes the other way
By Steven Zeitchik
The Weinstein Company moves them in, they move them out.
Just a few weeks after solidifying "The Reader," a movie that for a while looked like it will come out next year, as a pic that will be released in '08, another hopeful from the brothers could be headed out of this year and into '09.
There's new word that "The Road," the dark Dimension thriller starring Viggo Mortensen, is being pushed back from its mid-November opening to a December date -- and, pending an imminent meeting with producers 2929 and Nick Wechsler, could be deferred to '09 entirely.
The movie is not done, but not done, as we've seen with "The Reader" (and "Benjamin Button" and "Gran Torino" and a host of other under the wire -- or "under the wire" -- fall titles, is a subjective term). So the answer may turn on how hard the Weinsteins push filmmaker John Hillcoat and producers to finish.
What are the reasons for and against a fall push?
The Dimenson pic is seen as a commercial play (though Cormac McCarthy's book, about a father and son who wander a barren and lawless post-apocalyptic landscape, is more meditative than your typical genre flick). That could lower the imperative for a release in the awards-centric December and make a spring event movie more paltable.
And the fact that TWC now has both a straight commercial play in "Zack and Miri" and an awards-play in "The Reader" can lower the need (and minimize the resources) for a third pic that falls somewhere in the middle.
On the other hand, the movie has an Oscar pedigree in McCarthy and Mortensen. And the Weinsteins historically want to put as many Oscar chips on the poker table as they can
A few weeks ago a disagreement between distributor and producers in a TWC movie resulted in a fall release date. This time our prediction is the movie moves to '09.
no way, no way. we've waited for this film for to long, push them to finish it
Posted by: joel | October 16, 2008 at 08:32 AM