Viggo Mortensen post-apocalyptic thriller and Kate Winslet Oscar hopeful release dates get dicey

According to The Hollywood Reporter, two highly anticipated films being distributed by The Weinstein Company are in jeopardy of being pushed to 2009.

The first, Viggo Mortensen’s dark thriller The Road, which is being shuttled through the Weinstein’s Dimension unit, was originally was prepping for a November 14th 2008 limited opening and a November 26th wide release. Now it’s been shifted until at December at the earliest, and might be moved to 2009. Executives are meeting today with the film’s producers, 2929 Entertainment and Nick Wechsler Productions, to discuss whether the project will be released this year, or pushed back to 2009.

The film is based on a Cormac McCarthy novel set in a post-apocalyptic world and follows a man and his son trying to survive in the wasteland by any means possible. Since a previous McCarthy book resulted in the Oscar-winning adaptation No Country for Old Men, and Mortensen was nominated last year for Eastern Promises, The Road is considered an awards contender, which makes pushing the movie even more complicated. However, the John Hillcoat (The Proposition) project is in currently in post-production and simply not ready for release, according to sources.

The Road also stars Kodi Smit-McPhee, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Michael K. Williams, Robert Duvall and Garret Dillahunt.

The Reader is the second film in jeopardy of being pushed back, although Bob Weinstein insisted at a conference in New York just yesterday, that it will indeed be ready for at least a limited release on December 10th 2008, in order to qualify for a possible Oscar nod. Another Hollywood Reporter story indicated that The Reader’s producer Scott Rudin, removed himself from the project last week, partly because of pressure from the Weinsteins to speed up postproduction. Rudin has two other Oscar contenders this year, including Reservation Road and Doubt.

The Stephen Daldry-helmed Reader takes place in postwar Germany, and follows a young man’s obsession with an older woman, who ultimately learns an awful truth about her, during a war crimes trial. The Reader is based on a novel by Bernhard Schlink, and stars Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, Alexandra Maria Lara, Bruno Ganz, David Kross, Volker Bruch, Karoline Herfurth, Hannah Herzsprung, Susanne Lothar and Linda Bassett.

Film Fetish Trivia: Actor Guy Pearce, who appears in The Road whenever it reaches theaters, also starred in John Hillcoat’s western The Proposition.