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We not only have two more Cormac McCarthy adaptations on the way, but two adaptations of even better books.
First off there's The Road due later this year, a hard, devastating post-apocalyptic story of a father and son struggling to survive under hopeless circumstances in a harsh wasteland. Think a real-world Grave of the Fireflies with only a 10th of the sentimentality and 10 times the horror and poetry (which is saying something, I think). I have tentatively high hopes about this one, it's in production and set to star Viggo Mortensen with lesser roles for Charlize Theron and Guy Pearce among others. John Hillcoat is the director, whose awkward The Proposition was the most inexplicably overrated film of 2005 by my admittedly controversial reckoning, but there was at least enough in that film to suggest he could tackle this kind of scenario visually.
Even more intriguing (and horrifying) is Ridley Scott's intended adaptation of Blood Meridian. Widely considered one of the greatest novels of the last 50 years, Amazon accurately describes it as "a perverse, picaresque Western about bounty hunters for Indian scalps near the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s--a ragged caravan of indiscriminate killers led by an unforgettable human monster called 'The Judge.' Imagine the imagery of Sam Peckinpah and Heironymus Bosch as written by William Faulkner, and you'll have just an inkling of this novel's power." It could potentially be amazing, but as everybody has said when I've given them this news, the damn thing's got to be almost unfilmable.
And man, Ridley Scott. If he's going to do it justice he's going to have to make something as good as Blade Runner, maybe even better. This is just about the most unHollywood story possible in every sense - if even a speck of anything vaguely Gladiator-esque seeps into this movie it'll be a failure unless he vastly deviates from his source. I don't think it's likely to arrive 'til '09 at the earliest, and barely anything is confirmed about it if IMDB is anything to go by, but I can't wait and hope it never comes at the same time.
So... thoughts? Anyone read these?
First off there's The Road due later this year, a hard, devastating post-apocalyptic story of a father and son struggling to survive under hopeless circumstances in a harsh wasteland. Think a real-world Grave of the Fireflies with only a 10th of the sentimentality and 10 times the horror and poetry (which is saying something, I think). I have tentatively high hopes about this one, it's in production and set to star Viggo Mortensen with lesser roles for Charlize Theron and Guy Pearce among others. John Hillcoat is the director, whose awkward The Proposition was the most inexplicably overrated film of 2005 by my admittedly controversial reckoning, but there was at least enough in that film to suggest he could tackle this kind of scenario visually.
Even more intriguing (and horrifying) is Ridley Scott's intended adaptation of Blood Meridian. Widely considered one of the greatest novels of the last 50 years, Amazon accurately describes it as "a perverse, picaresque Western about bounty hunters for Indian scalps near the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s--a ragged caravan of indiscriminate killers led by an unforgettable human monster called 'The Judge.' Imagine the imagery of Sam Peckinpah and Heironymus Bosch as written by William Faulkner, and you'll have just an inkling of this novel's power." It could potentially be amazing, but as everybody has said when I've given them this news, the damn thing's got to be almost unfilmable.
And man, Ridley Scott. If he's going to do it justice he's going to have to make something as good as Blade Runner, maybe even better. This is just about the most unHollywood story possible in every sense - if even a speck of anything vaguely Gladiator-esque seeps into this movie it'll be a failure unless he vastly deviates from his source. I don't think it's likely to arrive 'til '09 at the earliest, and barely anything is confirmed about it if IMDB is anything to go by, but I can't wait and hope it never comes at the same time.
So... thoughts? Anyone read these?
