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The Road is an upcoming post-apocalyptic film directed by John Hillcoat and written by Joe Penhall. The film is based on the 2006 novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and it stars Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee as a father and his son in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Filming took place in Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Oregon. The film is scheduled to be released sometime in 2009.

Premise

The Road follows the premise from the book of the same name.

Cast

• Viggo Mortensen as the Man. Mortensen explained the interaction of the father with his son, "They’re on this difficult journey, and the father is basically learning from the son."
• Kodi Smit-McPhee as the Boy.
• Charlize Theron as the Wife, who appears in flashback. Theron joined the film because she was a fan of the book and had previously worked with producer Nick Wechsler on the 2000 film The Yards. The character will have a larger role in the film than she did in the book. Hillcoat said of the expanded role, "I think it's fine to depart from the book as long as you maintain the spirit of it."
• Michael K. Williams as a thief.
• Guy Pearce as a father wandering with his family.
• Robert Duvall as an old, dying man.

Production

In November 2006, producer Nick Wechsler used independent financing to acquire film rights to adapt the 2006 novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy. When Wechsler had watched John Hillcoat's 2006 film The Proposition after reading The Road, the producer decided to pursue Hillcoat to direct the film adaptation. Wechsler described Hillcoat's style: "There was something beautiful in the way John captured the stark primitive humanity of the West in that movie." In April 2007, Joe Penhall was hired to script the adapted screenplay. Wechsler and his fellow producers Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz planned to have a script and an actor cast to portray the father before pursuing a distributor for the film. By the following November, actor Viggo Mortensen had entered negotiations with the filmmakers to portray the father, though he was occupied with filming Appaloosa in New Mexico with Ed Harris.

With a budget of $20 million, filming began in southwestern Pennsylvania in late February 2008 for eight weeks and moved on to Louisiana and Oregon. Pennsylvania, where most of the filming took place, was chosen for its tax breaks and its abundance of locations that looked post-apocalyptic: coalfields, dunes, and run-down parts of Pittsburgh. The abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike was used for much of production. The director also said of using Pittsburgh as a practical location, "It's a beautiful place in fall with the colors changing, but in winter, it can be very bleak. There are city blocks that are abandoned. The woods can be brutal. We didn't want to go the CGI world." Filmmakers also shot scenes in parts of New Orleans that had been ravaged by Hurricane Katrina and on Mount St. Helens in Washington.

Hillcoat sought to make the film faithful to the spirit of the book, creating "a world in severe trauma", though never explaining the circumstances of the apocalyptic event like in the book. According to Hillcoat, "That's what makes it more realistic, then it immediately becomes about survival and how you get through each day as opposed to what actually happened." Filmmakers took advantage of days with bad weather to portray the post-apocalyptic environment. Mark Forker, the director of special effects for the film, sought to make the landscape convincing, handling sky replacement and digitally removing greenery from scenes.

Release

The Road was originally scheduled to be released in November 2008. It was pushed back to be released in December and pushed back a second time to sometime in 2009. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the studio decided that the film would benefit from a longer post-production process and a less crowded release calendar.

References

1. ^ Vancheri, Barbara (April 24, 2008). "Filming wraps up on post-apocalyptic 'The Road'". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved May 27, 2008. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
2. ^ McGrath, Charles (May 27, 2008). "At World's End, Honing a Father-Son Dynamic". The New York Times. Retrieved May 27, 2008. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
3. Siegel, Tatiana (January 14, 2008). "Charlize Theron hits 'The Road'". Variety. Retrieved May 27, 2008. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
4. ^ "First Look: 'The Road'". USA Today. Retrieved August 7, 2008. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
5. Fleming, Michael (November 7, 2006). "'Road' to bigscreen". Variety. Retrieved May 27, 2008. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
6. Fleming, Michael (April 1, 2007). "Penhall paves 'Road'". Variety. Retrieved May 27, 2008. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
7. Schwartz, Missy (October 7, 2007). "Viggo Mortensen May Hit 'The Road'". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved May 27, 2008. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
8. Sullivan, James (October 19, 2008). "A fork (and a bump) in 'The Road'". Boston Globe. Retrieved January 1, 2009. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
9. "Mortensen, Theron on 'The Road' to Pittsburgh". USA Today. January 16, 2008. Retrieved May 27, 2008. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
10. Bowles, Scott (August 6, 2008). "Sneak peek: 'The Road' is fiction, but the bleak scenery is real". USA Today. Retrieved August 7, 2008. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
11. Zeitchik, Steven (October 18, 2008). ""Road" rerouted into 2009 release schedule". The Hollywood Reporter. Reuters. Retrieved January 1, 2009. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)

External links

• Official website
• The Road at IMDb
• Template:Amg title
• Photo gallery at USA Today

• 2009 films
• American films
• English-language films
• Post-apocalyptic films
• Road movies