Star Set forFilm

On the Road, Jack Kerouac's classic tale of male bonding while traveling cross-country, will finally become a film, and Twilight star Kristen Stewart is set to play the female lead, reports Web site E!Online. Kerouac's novel was published in 1957 and is considered one of the quintessential works of the Beat Generation prevalent in the middle of the 20th century. Sal Paradise, the protagonist of Kerouac's novel, is based on the writer himself, and many readers have responded to the homoerotic subtext in the relationship between Paradise and another character, Dean Moriarty, a fictionalized version of Beat legend Neal Cassady. Stewart will play Marylou, Moriarty's wife, with whom he has an off-and-on relationship. Gay poet Allen Ginsberg, portrayed in the novel as Carlo Marx, is the subject of the fall release Howl, which will star James Franco and depicts the notorious obscenity trial that resulted from the publication of his epic poem of the same name.

Walter Salles, who brought The Motorcycle Diaries, another book thought impossible to film, to the big screen in 2004, will direct the screenplay written by Jose Rivera and produced by Francis Ford Coppola. Shooting is expected to begin this summer.