Hedlund heads up On The Road

Tron Legacy star Garrett Hedlund has signed up for the film adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s novel On The Road .

Hedlund will play the lead character of Dean Moriarty for director Walter Salles. Francis Ford Coppola first optioned Kerouac’s novel back in the ‘70s, but passed the project on to numerous other directors.

The book was first published in 1957, and is deemed an important example of Beat Generation writing. It’s a semi-autobiographical work inspired by Kerouac’s experiences with jazz and drugs as he travelled through North America.

Salles first became attached to the film in 2005, the year after his Motorcycle Diaries was released, when he collaborated with screenwriter Jose Rivera on a script adaptation.

“I am not really interested in doing a period piece that wouldn’t have a correlation with what we are living right now,” Salles said in 2008.

“There is a strange modernity to the theme, and maybe On the Road is more contemporary today than it ever was.”

Whether or not Salles transports Road 's story into modern times is yet to be seen.

Production Weekly report that filming is to commence this summer. That said, numerous other shooting dates for the film have come and gone with nothing to show for them.

Last year it was revealed that Control ’s Sam Riley had been cast as Sal Paradise (the book's narrator), but no news if he’s still attached this long after the fact.

Looking forward to finally seeing this get made?