Here's a treat for anyone who has ever dreamed of donning a black turtleneck and sparking up a cigarette in a dingy basement coffee bar: On The Road is finally approaching screens, with a release date pencilled in for later this year (in the US, at least) and the first pictures now online.
These show Sam Riley as Sal Paradise, the story's narrator; Kristen Stewart as Marylou and Garrett Hedlund as Dean Moriarty. Walter Salles is directing, and the film also stars Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Mortensen, Amy Adams and Steve Buscemi.
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Jack Kerouac's book is a touchstone of the Beat movement and proved a huge influence on everyone from Bob Dylan to Hunter S. Thompson, but it's taken its own sweet time getting to the screen. Gus Van Sant was planning to tackle it for a long time, before the rights were picked up by Francis Ford Coppola. He hired Walter Salles after seeing The Motorcycle Diaries and realising that this man knew how to handle cool. Let's hope, for the sake of would-be rebels everywhere, that he captures the book's unique appeal.