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The trailer for The Road (which now has a release date of October 16) has hit the net courtesy of Yahoo! Movies but we've got an embed here thanks to Trailer Addict. For those who read the Cormac McCarthy book (and I haven't, but I was told the entire thing by a "helpful" friend), you're going to notice what looks like a lot of changes to the story. The mysterious disaster is made explicit, Charlize Theron is given a lot more screen time than the wife ever had in the book, and the action is upped ten times over.

However, this trailer has caused a lot of controversy already with people who have seen the film. Esquire just published a review this week, and noted that the Weinstein Company was falling prey to the temptation to cut a trailer that looked like a post-apocalyptic action movie. According to Esquire, John Hillcoat's film is (and other reviews have borne this out) as quiet, harrowing, and bleak as the novel is, and may just be "the most important film of the year". Unfortunately, the Weinsteins feel no one will see it unless there's an "explanation" and a hook of kick ass action, even if the film itself lacks the things the trailer sells.

But at least you get a glimpse of the real film underneath, which is enough to cause you to choke up. I think we're promised one hell of a gut-wrenching performance from Viggo Mortensen. Just look at his eyes.

It's been ages since we've heard a peep about the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road. After McCarthy's brutal Texas drama No Country for Old Men won four Oscars at the 80th Academy Awards, rumors of future McCarthy adaptations of The Road and Blood Meridian sprung up immediately, with The Road slated for a November 2008 release. Then McCarthy's post-apocalyptic doom-fest was pushed to December, and then ... silence.

But fans of the book -- which was re-released with one of those "Now being made into a real-life motion picture!!!!" stamps a while ago -- can quit their grumbling, because The Road will be released on October 16th, 2009. Once again, it's just in time for Oscar season.

It seemed like a no-brainer to shuffle this genius McCarthy work out the door, especially judging by the cast (helloooo, Viggo), director John Hillcoat, and the few grimy photo stills released to the public. It also bears mentioning that Mr. McCarthy is a tough road to hoe himself, and is known for his dislike for the press and reluctance to get involved in any more film projects after his rumored dissatisfaction with the 2000 adaptation of All the Pretty Horses. So what happened?

It seems like every other day Ridley Scott is promising to make a movie (even when we wish he wouldn't). But, one project that he can't seem to get in motion is the feature film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's western, Blood Meridian. In an interview with Empire, Scott gave an update on the adaptation, and it sounds like it could be one heck of a movie, but you are left with the feeling that it isn't going to happen any time soon. Scott told Empire, "It's written. I think it's a really tricky one, and maybe it's something that should be left as a novel. If you're going to do Blood Meridian you've got to go the whole nine yards into the blood bath, and there's no answer to the blood bath, that's part of the story, just the way it is and the way it was."

McCarthy's novel centered on a teenage runaway referred to as "the kid" and his time with the Glanton gang, a historical group of scalp hunters who massacred pretty much everyone they came across on the United States–Mexico borderlands in 1849 and 1850. Back in August, it had been announced that Todd Field (Little Children) would be taking over for Scott on the project, but Scott made no mention of Field in Empire's interview. Leaving us with another unanswered question hanging over the project: if and when this movie ever gets going, just who is going to be directing it?

Since I haven't read the original novel, I leave it to you out there. Can anyone make a film version of McCarthy's brutal and violent novel? Or, is Scott right? Maybe Meridian should stay on the bookshelf where it belongs.

In news that is equally rumored and dreaded, it looks like the Weinsteins' haste to get The Reader in the running for this year's awards season might be a matter of John Hillcoat's anticipated adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's acclaimed novel, The Road, not being ready for its limited release a month from now, let alone year's end.

It's bad enough that neither film was ready for any of the big fall film festivals, but a good friend told me something similar three days ago, and now, Kristopher Tapley at In Contention and Dave Karger's EW Oscar Watch are talking along the same lines. I can't say that I'm the same William who posted the following reaction on Karger's page -- and I quote: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" -- but my own sentiments on the (possible) move aren't all that far off.

For that matter, my feelings on the novel and film themselves are akin to those of our own Eugene Novikov: that the book is merely Damn Good, but could make for a Great movie. We may not have a poster, or a trailer, or a fully functioning website just yet, but for all the Weinsteins' release date shell games, I can't help but think they have more to lose holding off on this than The Reader, which producer Scott Rudin took his name off after it was bumped up to contend with star Kate Winslet's other awards prospect, Revolutionary Road (itself based on an acclaimed novel).

I mean, I'm not exactly wishing that The Reader is Winslet's next All the King's Men or anything, but is this studio not big enough for the both of them? Or is this year merely not long enough?

Ever since McG was announced as director of Terminator Salvation, he's taken on this rather endearing, apologetic, puppy-dog attitude, assuring fans that he takes the franchise seriously, and even apologizing for the absurdity of his trade name. It would have worked much better on me had I not sat through We Are Marshall, but it does make me want to give the guy the benefit of the doubt, especially given how badly I want this sequel to be good.

The filmmaker's newest gambit: showing us just how seriously he takes the Terminator franchise. Just how seriously? So seriously, he says, that he distributed copies of Cormac McCarthy's arty, ultra-depressing The Road to his cast, hoping that the novel would help the actors understand the "existential detachment" that comes with living in a post-apocalyptic environment. MTV has a bit more from the director.

I wrote a column on The Road a while back; it's a powerful, upsetting novel, pretty un-Terminator-like in its depiction of an empty, decidedly cyborg-free post-apocalypse. It's hard to take seriously the notion that an entry in the Terminator franchise -- a PG-13 entry at that -- could really draw much inspiration from that book (which is, of course, getting its own bona-fide adaptation later this year), but again: it's endearing, and a bit heartening, to see McG trying so hard.

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]