Kerouac's On The Road gets a movie

Directed by Walter Salles ( Dark Water, The Motorcycle Diaries ) Starring Sam Riley, Garrett Hedland ( pictured ) Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Mortensesn, Kristen Stewart, Amy Adams, Steve Buscemi, Terrence Howard, Elizabeth Moss and Alice Braga. Cinematography handled by Eric Gauiter ( Into The Wild ) No release date has been set but the film is planning to open in 2011.

On the Road is a novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, written in April 1951, and published by Viking Press in 1957. It is a largely autobiographical work that was based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America. It is often considered a defining work of the postwar Beat Generation that was inspired by jazz, poetry, and drug experiences. While many of the names and details of Kerouac's experiences are changed for the novel, hundreds of references in On the Road have real-world counterparts.

When the book was originally released, The New York Times hailed it as "the most beautifully executed, the clearest and most important utterance" of Kerouac's generation.[1] The novel was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.