Update: Nice, THR has confirmed the entire cast and yes, it’s the same people below. The film is set to start shooting in August and it will have a relatively small $25 million dollar budget.
As we reported recently, Focus Features are off this project and now French production banner MK2 has the rights and will produce in conjunction with Film 4 in the U.K. and Videofilmes in Brazil. No word if it will shoot in black and white as Salles originally suggested it must. EW says the film will be shot in New Orleans and in Montreal.
Earlier today: “Twilight” actress Kristen Stewart has revealed that she’ll be joining Walter Salles’ adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s iconic Beat-Generation novel, “On the Road.”
The actress will play Mary Lou, the child-bride of Neal Cassady surrogate Dean Moriarty, who’ll be played by “Tron Legacy” and “Friday Night Lights” star Garrett Hedlund. There’s also word of Sam Riley playing lead Kerouac surrogate and protagonist Sal Paradise though nothing has been officially confirmed on that front as of yet.
“On the Road” is a semi-biographical work from Kerouac that follows his spontaneous road trips with friends across 50’s America in the pursuit of self-knowledge and experience. Plenty of filmmakers have tried their hand at adapting the book over the years, but most have fallen by the wayside until now with the Focus Features and Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope production set to go in front of cameras this summer.
Salles’ efforts to bring the novel to screen has also been documented in “In Search of On the Road,” a film that recently screened at the San Francisco International Film Festival. While few details were revealed in the documentary of its potential production, it was noted that “any version of ‘On the Road’ done correctly would need to be shot in black and white.”
While many might not agree, we think Stewart isn’t a bad choice for the role. She definitely deserves more credit than her “Twilight” fame and has always fared better in films that don’t involve vampires (“Adventureland,” “The Runaways”), even going as far as expressing disdain for the aforementioned franchise. A performance along the lines of her small supporting role alongside Emile Hirsch in Sean Penn’s “Into The Wild” will probably work in this pic.
We’re confident Salles knows what he’s doing anyway after sitting on the project for nearly five years, waiting for the opportunity to make the film without compromise. Adapting cult fiction is always an uphill battle but if anyone can bring this tale to the screen, surely it’s the man behind “The Motorcycle Diaries.”
This story originally posted at 10:02 AM EST today.