Thanks to Bloody D for filling us in on the just-announced release pattern for John Hillcoat's adaptation of the Pultizer-winning Cormac McCarthy novel The Road. And here it is:

November 14 -- New York and Los Angeles
November 21 -- Limited release
November 26 -- Wide release

There, now you know how long you have to finish the book -- which takes a few pages to get into, but is really quite excellent if you want my opinion. The movie version comes from the director of The Proposition (which is also quite excellent), and the adaptation comes from screenwriter Joe Penhall. The impressive cast includes the likes of Viggo Mortensen, Robert Duvall, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, and young newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee..

Expect a Cinematical review of The Road in mid-November, since Erik Davis lives in New York and he is REALLY freakin' excited to see this movie. (Oooh, or maybe it will play at Toronto, in which case you can bump that review up a month.)

One of my concerns when I started doing this column was that each forthcoming adaptation I covered would equate to a new movie losing the ability to surprise me. What more effective way to strip oneself of the thrill of cinematic discovery, I thought, than to pore over the source material before watching? Ultimately I decided that the prospect of literary discovery along with the chance to write the column more than compensated for that risk, but here's some evidence that maybe I shouldn't have worried at all: having read Cormac McCarthy's The Road, I'm more excited to see John Hillcoat's adaptation – coming this November -- than I ever would have been otherwise.

It just might be possible that Ridley Scott has become one of the busiest directors in the business. Over the course of a year, Scott has been attached to everything from a fashion biopic on Gucci to a big-screen Monopoly flick -- and now there is another title to add to the list. In an interview with the rough and tumble director about his recent projects, the conversation drifted to sci-fi movies and Scott tells Eclipse Magazine, "I am going to do one. I waited for a book for 20 years and I have got the book. I am not going to tell you what the book is but that film is going to probably be written within the next month. That will definitely be what I do next after Nottingham..." Considering the man was responsible for one of the best sci-fi films ever made, trying to top it is going to be a tall order.

Scott failed to mention where this leaves his classic noir flick with Casey Affleck, The Kind One, or the long-suffering Cormac McCarthy adaptation, Blood Meridian. He did provide an update on Meridian and told Eclipse, "We got it down as a screenplay and the problem is that it is so savage. But that's what it is. If you did it properly it would be an X-certificate. But you can't apologise for the violence and you can't quantify the violence and you shouldn't try to explain the violence. It is what it is..." If there's anyone who can sell stylized violence to audiences, it's Scott, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed on that one.

Remember, nothing is official for either of these projects, so stay tuned to Cinematical for updates.

Just when it was looking like No Country for Old Men had a monopoly on successful interpretations of Cormac McCarthy's drearily minimalistic prose, production on an adaptation of The Road suggests the possibility of healthy competition. The movie, which recently finished shooting in Pennsylvania and hits theaters in November, remains a wild card until post-production wraps. Nevertheless, if this colorful report from the set in The New York Times offers any indication, The Road appears poised to capture McCarthy's original gloomy lyricism. Reporter Charles McGrath points out the difficulties the filmmakers endured when the weather got too nice and the grass looked too green. In other words, they're working really hard to keep things bleak. The story, about a father and son wandering through desolate landscapes after a cataclysmic event destroys civilization, demands that the dark aura remain intact. However, it wouldn't work without two strong leads, and McGrath implies that with Viggo Mortensen and eleven-year-old Kodi Smit-Mcphee (the next Haley Joel Osment?), that need has been fulfilled.

The best match for The Road, however, is its director, John Hillcoat, whose work on The Proposition proves he's the man for the job. That woefully undervalued western had the intensity of a Sam Peckinpah movie in overdrive, and The Road screams for the same raw, stripped-down approach. It's nice to hear that Hillcoat sees the movie as an antithesis to Mad Max, meaning he wants to eschew cartoony violence in order to create a scarily realistic depiction of post-apocalyptic duress. Bring it on.

[Photo above: Kodi Smit-Mcphee on the set of The Road, courtesy of the New York Times]

One of the things I love about living in New York City is that it's easy for us to spot trends before, say, folks from Memphis (sorry Memphis, but your boys choked BIG TIME last night). Part of this is because most NY'ers travel by mass transit -- allowing everyone to see what everyone else is wearing, reading, watching, etc ... When I'm on the train, I particularly like to check out what the hot books are. Usually you can tell which book is hot because one out of three people are reading it. At the height of The Da Vinci Code madness, I couldn't even tell you how many people were on that one. (I'd even catch some who took off the dust jacket in an attempt to hide the title because they didn't want other people to know they were reading what everyone else was reading. No joke.)

I watch the book trends because I like to see which are being turned into movies. This, in turn, helps me predict which upcoming movies will do well at the box office. If I see a lot of people reading one book, chances are those same people will run to the theater when the film comes out. Now, I haven't been out on the train too much in the past month, but I've noticed one book that doesn't seem to be going away. In fact, I visited two bookstores before finally finding it in stock. (In the last subway car I rode in, I counted three different people reading it.) The book?

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy.

Everyone and their (his?) mother loves The Proposition, the Nick Cave-penned Australian western starring Danny Huston as a villain who could give Chigurh a run for his money in sheer badassery. It's hard to blame them, since movies that gritty and tough don't come along very often. (As modern westerns go, I think 3:10 to Yuma is better, but it certainly isn't as awesomely brutal.) Two years after that film became a critical darling and a sleeper hit of sorts, director John Hillcoat -- who is currently in production on Cormac McCarthy's The Road -- has signed with Columbia to direct an adaptation of a not-yet-released novel by Matt Bondurant called The Wettest Country in the World. The book is about a trio of gangsters -- the author's grandfather and grand-uncles -- who ran the moonshine trade at the peak of the Prohibition Era, and the writer who tracked them in search of a scoop.

The new Cyborg movie...sorry... The upcoming post-apocalyptic Cormac McCarthy adaptation, The Road, has got itself a leading lad. The Hollywood Reporter has posted that the son who gets to travel around with Viggo Mortensen is Aussie actor Kodi Smit-McPhee. This is the kid who might be playing the young Logan in the upcoming Wolverine movie, and he played Raimond Gaita in the memoir adaptation Romulus, My Father.

The 11-year-old's role in the film is to travel with Papa Viggo on "a months-long journey across a barren U.S. landscape after a cataclysmic event destroyed most of life on Earth." Somewhere along the way, they remember mom, because Charlize Theron will play the wife and mother in flashbacks. (Bana, Mortensen, Potente, and Theron, aren't bad movie parents to have at the start of your career!) After the success of No Country for Old Men, expectations are pretty high for this feature, and for me especially, since I love director John Hillcoat's The Proposition.

That being said ... I think I should read the book, because I just keep putting Viggo's face over Van Damme's, Theron's over the old, dead love interest, and now Kodi's face over the cyborg he travels with. All we need is Bender, and this new flick is set!

At last count, it looked like Guy Pearce might have been replacing Viggo Mortensen in the upcoming adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Fortunately (and no offense, Guy) it looks like Viggo is still on board ... plus he just got a gal named Charlize Theron as a co-star. According to Variety, the Oscar-winning blonde will play the main character's wife, a small but important character who will appear mostly through flashbacks.

An admitted fan of the source material, Ms. Theron will be working alongside director John Hillcoat (of the excellent The Proposition) and screenwriter Joe Penhall (of the strangely entertaining Enduring Love). The adaptation, which is being produced by 2929 Entertainment and distributed by the Weinsteins' Dimension Films, tells the story of "a man who embarks on a nightmarish road trip after a nuclear explosion in an attempt to transport his son to safety while fending off cannibals." Awesome.

And thanks also to Variety for the reminder: I need a good book for my Sundance flight -- and The Road is definitely going to be it. I think that will be the first "Oprah's Book Club" selection that I've ever read. (No offense, Oprah.)

No Country for Old Men, the new film from Joel and Ethan Coen, is an unquestionable return to form. It is scary, funny, moving, violent, and meaningful, in pretty much equal measure. The Coens' take on the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name is a pairing as successful, as seamless, as delicious as that of chocolate and peanut butter.

Josh Brolin gives the finest of his four excellent performances this year as Llewelyn Moss. Moss is a struggling everyman who stumbles upon a circle of trucks and dead Mexicans in the desert -- a heroin deal gone bad. Real bad. The lone survivor asks Moss for some agua, and Moss ignores the request. He surveys the scene and eventually comes upon a suitcase filled with $2 million dollars. Moss' response upon finding the money? A simple "Yeah." It's a perfect moment in a movie packed with them. Moss takes the money and returns home to his trailer and his wife Carla Jean (Kelly MacDonald). Soon, his conscience begins to nag at him, and he decides to head back to the scene of the crime to give the dying man a drink. A compassionate decision, but not, as you can probably imagine, an intelligent one.

Javier Bardem plays Anton Chigurh (start to say Chicago and then growl and you're close to the pronunciation). I'll leave his specific involvement in the proceedings up to you to figure out, but just know that he really wants that $2 million. Moss will come to refer to Chigurh as "the ultimate badass," and that's about right. Chigurh is a classic screen villain, the kind we haven't seen in far too long. Every time he appears on screen, cattle stunner in tow, it just makes your heart sink -- somebody is going down. Much like Hannibal Lecter, the guy is a vicious, remorseless killer, but he has a strangely sensible logic and one can't help but be seduced by him. Bardem, sporting a Prince Valiant haircut, gives a flawless performance here, one that will likely be noticed come Oscar time. He completely disappears into Chigurh.

What a difference a month can make. Back in September, Viggo Mortensen seemed pretty confident when he told MTV Movies Blog that he was in talks to star in a big-screen version of Cormac McCarthy's, The Road. Now, Shock Till You Drop is reporting that Guy Pearce could be replacing Mortensen in the film. Mortensen was never officially confirmed, so Pearce as a replacement would seem to be the most likely scenario -- especially since the story isn't exactly teeming with characters. The novel focuses on a father and son who are survivors of an apocalyptic event and are trying to make it to 'the coast' while surrounded by fellow survivors who have reverted to cannibalism. If you haven't read the book, I really recommend picking it up, although be warned: don't let that Oprah Book Club selection sticker lull you into thinking this is a feel-good story. Nothing could be further from the truth.

John Hillcoat is already set to direct the Joe Penhall adaptation and since Hillcoat worked with Pearce on the revisionist western, The Proposition, back in 2006, that could tip the scales in Pearce's favor. The film could be a bit of a hard-sell with audiences to begin with. There is some truly disturbing stuff going on in the story, and for those of you who have read the book, you probably know what I mean. Luckily, no matter which actor they go with, I think either would be more than capable of handling the role, don't you? The Road is tentatively scheduled for release in 2009.