Hillcoat's 'Road' faces release problems

John Hillcoat's drama The Road has had its release date changed after a receiving a negative reaction at a recent test screening.

Originally penciled in for a November 26 wide release, the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel has been pushed back to December and could potentially be moved to 2009, says The Hollywood Reporter.

A film fan in attendance at a focus group screening of The Road told Chud that the movie was a "complete mess".

They said: "It was just a complete mess... the film never pretends to be interested in its opaque story, replacing what I assume would be literary details with bleak, miserablist moments edited together randomly, none feeling like they emerged from the same film.

"It might just be unadaptable, because after the first twenty minutes the rest of the film is a crushing bore of a foregone conclusion."

The Weinstein Company drama focuses on an unnamed man (Viggo Mortensen) and his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) making their way across a post-apocalyptic landscape.

The Reader, another Weinstein Company drama, has also faced problems in post-production. The film was put on a rushed release schedule by Harvey Weinstein, prompting producer Scott Rudin to exit the project.