Green light on ‘Road’ movie

The material seems intended more for brooding literary types than multiplex moviegoers: Cormac McCarthy’s novel “The Road” depicts a sunless, hopeless world in which cannibalism and enslavement are everyday realities and wildlife is extinct.

But since being published last year, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel has had Hollywood talking, winding up on the nightstands of Sean Penn, director Peter Berg and Brad Pitt, among others.

Now, after being championed by Oprah’s Book Club in June, a big-screen adaptation is about to get the go-ahead. Dimension Films is in final negotiations to acquire North American distribution rights to “The Road,” with Viggo Mortensen expected to star and John Hillcoat (“The Proposition”) attached to direct.

McCarthy’s novel “All the Pretty Horses” reached the screen in 2000. In November, the Coen brothers will release an adaptation of his crime thriller “No Country for Old Men,” starring Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem.

-- Chris Lee