Filmmakers gear up for road movie

Jack Kerouac’s Beat generation classic On the Road is finally being made into a Hollywood film.

The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola secured the film rights almost 40 years ago but has never managed to get the project off the ground.

The script is being penned by Jose Rivera, who wrote last year’s hit The Motorcycle Diaries about Che Guevara’s road trip through South America in the 1950s.

Kerouac’s thinly disguised autobiography follows Sal Paradise as he hitchhikes across America with a cast of friends, fellow travellers and lovers.

Published in 1957, the book is considered a cult classic, capturing the mood of a generation.

Coppola has tried to kickstart the project several times over recent years.

“The book is inherently difficult to adapt to the screen, and we’ve never quite found the right combination of director and writer to do it justice until now,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.

Director Walter Salles described it as a “seminal” book that gave voice to a generation.

“It is as modern today as it was four decades ago,” he said.

Billy Cruddup has been tipped to play Paradise. The cast, including Carlo Marx and Old Bull Lee, based on Beat poets Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, will be chosen next year.

Kerouac died age 47 in 1969.