Kerouac would never see his baby brought to the big screen, dying in 1969 before the film was even close to being made. It would take another nine years before a new buyer was found, when Francis Ford Coppola threw his hat into the ring, snapping up the rights to the novel in 1978. However, the process of adaptation would prove tricky.

Coppola commissioned eight different adaptations from various writers, constantly searching for a workable way of compressing the sprawling novel into something that could fit a conventional running time. Eventually, the director worked out a version he was happy with and planned to shoot the project in black and white on 16mm film, only to fall short of the necessary funding. The film remained dormant for several more years (narrowly avoiding a brief dalliance with Joel Schumacher), before a meeting with The Motorcycle Diaries' Walter Salles finally got things moving...