Kerouac's On The Road Finally Coming to the Big Screen?

Posted on August 10, 2005

Empire Online reports that Francis Ford Coppola, who purchased the film rights to Jack Kerouac's On The Road novel nearly forty years ago is finally closer to adapting the popular book into a movie. Coppola has decided to produce with Walter Salles directing and Jose Rivera adapting the book into a screenplay. Salles and Rivera also worked together on the Motorcycle Diaries film as director and writer. Motorcycle Diaries was based on the book with the same title by author Ernesto Che Guevara. Empire Online points out the similarities between the two stories.

The links between the Che Guevara epic and Kerouac's novel are clear -- both road movies, focused on two young men who learn about life and living on the way. Both are hugely influential, both boast a cult following and both were written by men who symbolised a generation - Guevara's revolutionaries and Kerouac's 'beat' poets.

Empire Online says the film is now currently in development and won't be in theatres until late next year at the earlies -- but at least the project is finally going forward.