Finally: Jack Kerouac’s On the Road to become Movie. Starring Kristen Stewart of Twilight fame…Sam Riley and Garrett Hedlund. Directed by Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries). Produced by Francis Ford Coppola.

It only took 53 years.

On the Road arrives at a theater near you in 2011.

Looks like the filmmakers that be didn’t listen to elephant. We were all set on Mad Men’s Jon Hamm playing Kerouac in what was until this week a future-hypothetical always-nearly-in-production yet-never-made film adaption of Jack Kerouac’s inherently cinematic, the truly Great American Novel, On the Road.

I remember hearing about a film adaption that nearly made it…way back in 1992 or 3, when Beat Buddhist poet and activist, and close friend of Jack’s, visited my school (Boston University) and said that he hoped Jonny Depp would play Kerouac.

From E!:

Filmmakers have long been attempting to bring the Jack Kerouac 1957 classic to the big screen. While both Francis Ford Coppola and Gus Van Sant have been unsuccessful in their attempts, it appears Motorcycle Diaries director Walter Salle is beginning to get the wheels turning in earnest….

Now, of course, Ginsberg himself is starring in a movie: Howl, where he’s being played by the energetically hunky James Franco (Allen would be pleased).

Info on On the Road (we’ll update as we have it):

It’s a $25 million production.

Director Walter Salles has already traveled across the U.S., retracing Kerouac’s footsteps to work out the adaptation. He’s filmed a documentary on his travels “On the Road”, perhaps for the DVD extras?

Oscar-nominated scribe Jose Rivera (“The Motorcycle Diaries”) wrote the screenplay.

Brilliant actress Kristen Stewart will play Dean Moriarty’s sexy, bubbly on-and-off wife Marylou. Hedlund is the charismatic, mad, brilliant Moriarty. Riley will star as Kerouac’s alter ego, the shy lonesome Sal Paradise.

“We are enormously proud to be collaborating on one of the last great cinematographic adventures of the 20th century to be brought to the screen,” backers Nathanael Karmitz and Charles Gillibert said.

Via USA Today:

Looks as if Kristen Stewart is going On the Road. And not just because she is doing publicity for the latest Twilight film, Eclipse, opening June 30.

As she told USA TODAY’s Susan Wloszczyna today while in Chicago for an Oprah taping, “I am very much attached to a movie that has been trying to get made forever. Not that this is going to help it, but maybe I can just brag a little bit. I am super excited about it, too. I am about to play Marylou in On the Road. So that’s a big deal.”

Bonus: the real deal: