Like a 16-year-old dreaming of ditching their suburban prison and just, like, seeing the world, Hollywood has gotten really into Jack Kerouac: The Kristen Stewart-starring On The Road won’t debut until late 2011 (although you can get an early glimpse at what it’ll look like here), but already an adaptation is underway of Kerouac’s Big Sur, the quasi-sequel that follows Kerouac’s experiences with dealing with the unlikely fame that On The Road brought him. The story—which most recently formed the basis of the documentary One Fast Move Or I’m Gone, and an accompanying album by Ben Gibbard and Jay Farrar—features several of the same characters as On The Road (i.e. fictionalized versions of Kerouac, Neal and Carolyn Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, etc.), but it has a decidedly less bohemian, freewheeling tone, covering the years when Kerouac retreated to a cabin in Northern California and tried to combat his descent into alcoholism.
Its adaptation will be directed by Michael Polish—one half of the identical Polish Brothers best known for Twin Falls, Idaho—who’s assembled a cast that includes Lars Von Trier regular Jean-Marc Barr as Kerouac, Josh Lucas as Neal Cassady, and Kate Bosworth as Billie, with smaller roles for Anthony Edwards, Radha Mitchell, Balthazar Getty, and Henry Thomas. With all these Kerouac novels suddenly getting the big-screen treatment, we remain shocked that no one has attempted to make a 3-D version of Doctor Sax. It even has vampires!