Kerouac’s ON THE ROAD
Hits the Big Screen!

It could be one of the greatest road trip books of all time. And now it’s hitting the big screen. Yes, 55 years after the publication of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, the iconic book has been made into a feature film, starring Sam Riley and Garrett Hedlund as the road-tripping duo, alongside cast mates Viggo Mortensen, Kristen Stewart and Kirsten Dunst. The film made its debut yesterday at the Cannes Film Festival; the U.S. release is scheduled for fall of this year.

Roman Coppola (yes, son of Francis Ford) and Brazilian director Walter Salles are the driving (yes, pun intended) force behind the production of On the Road. Francis Ford Coppola bought the book’s rights in 1979, and Salles is no stranger to making road trip movies: he was behind 2004’s The Motorcycle Diaries, about Che Guevara’s travels across South America. No surprise then that the screenplay for On the Road was written by Jose Rivera—who also wrote The Motorcycle Diaries screenplay.

“It’s about the search of that last frontier that they will never find,” Salles said of the story and film. “It’s about also discovering that this is the end of the road and the end of the American dream.”

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