Still, given "The Road's" end-of-the-world plot, Wechsler thought it best to make the movie beyond the reach of studio executives (who doubtlessly would have said, "Can't it be a really bad tsunami rather than the apocalypse?") and took it to 2929 Entertainment, where Wechsler has a deal.
In a twist of kismet, Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner's 2929 ("Good Night, and Good Luck") had liked Hillcoat's "Proposition" so much they had approached the director about making a mob-police drama. With Hillcoat at the helm of "The Road," 2929 agreed to finance its $25-million budget. Richard Gere expressed interest in the lead role, but Hillcoat always had Mortensen in mind. The laconic actor seems a natural for the part; he's naturally thin (and even more gaunt in the film itself), and, as "A History of Violence" and "Eastern Promises" proved, carries the fearless determination necessary to escape most predicaments.
Fox Searchlight passed on distributing the film, fearful that its apocalyptic plot and unspeakable atrocities were too demanding to sell to a wide audience. "People do rationalize" about why "The Road" is too difficult, says 2929 production chief Mark Butan, who nevertheless dismissed such worries as unfounded. The Weinstein Co. had no such qualms and will release "The Road" this fall.
--
Departure from the book
WITH THE incessant threats -- cannibals, thieves, starvation, dehydration, hypothermia -- the Man and the Boy face, it would seem unnecessary to make their survival even more difficult, but that's precisely what Penhall ("Enduring Love") and Hillcoat chose to do.
The film's most obvious departure from the book -- outside of the elimination of the novel's vaguely nuclear "long shear of light" that stopped clocks at 1:17 -- is its redoubling of the book's fleeting flashbacks of the Man and his final days with his desperate and suicidal wife (Charlize Theron). Throughout the movie, the filmmakers also have amplified McCarthy's already vast peril.
As readers of the book will recall, McCarthy takes detours along his corridor of brutality and despair. While the father and son make their way to the coast for unknown reasons, they enjoy not only a splash in a pristine waterfall but also discover a trove of canned food, a cistern of clear water, and even a place to take a bath. Some of those fleeting reprieves appear in the movie, but they're not always as calming on the screen as they were on the page.
