An apocalypse you can bear

Even on McCarthy's gothic scale for brutality, the 2006 novel was disturbingly depressing, not only in its specifically imagined terrors (notably including the roasting of a fetus on a spit) but also for its day-of-reckoning story line. For some people, especially parents, contemplating Armageddon alone with a child, even in a piece of fiction, was too unsettling to consider. There are people who openly weep reading "The Road," and many others who can't even pick it up.

Producer Nick Wechsler ("The Player," "Drugstore Cowboy") appreciated how troubling the book was but understood that underneath all of its desolation lay a story of hope and courage. "It's kind of ingrained in all fathers to protect their children," Wechsler said. "I wasn't afraid of the bleakness of the book, the darkness of the book."

Using money from public relations executives and nascent producers Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz, Wechsler won "The Road's" movie rights in a bidding war before the book was published. He then approached Hillcoat, unaware that the British filmmaker had directed 2005's little-seen but highly regarded western "The Proposition" as a homage to McCarthy's "Blood Meridian." (Like "Blood Meridian," Hillcoat's "The Proposition" is a bloody meditation on frontier justice where the rule of law is both a principle and a casualty.)

The rights deal for "The Road" closed before the book started sweeping up so many accolades -- "I think the success of the book took a lot of people by surprise," Hillcoat says -- and came as part of a fresh push to turn McCarthy's earlier books into films.

"No Country's" Academy Award-winning producer Scott Rudin and "Little Children" filmmaker Todd Field have been developing a "Blood Meridian" movie, and Australian filmmaker Andrew Dominik wants to film "Cities on the Plain," the last book in McCarthy's border trilogy. Said Field in explaining McCarthy's appeal: "His work examines our core, the two faces of violence that co-exist in every savage act -- brutal strength of purpose holding hands with a desperate and cowering weakness."

Though "The Road" unfolds on an ample landscape, it is ultimately a personal story, a fable of how individuals react when facing extraordinary circumstances. "At its core is a primal struggle against the utmost extremes of the natural world -- and a thrilling evocation of human endurance," Hillcoat wrote in a memo he prepared for his creative team. "It is an unflinching examination of human beings at their worst -- and at their best. . . . By the end of the film, it is the child's innate goodness and grace under fire that changes the man, showing us that amidst barbarity, our humanity can be inextinguishable."