One the Road to be adapted by Walter Salles

Just came across this news, very interesting to me for a few reasons. The first being my surprise that it took Hollywood this long to get a green light on this adaptation and the second being that once it was, they gave a lesser known Brazilian director the reigns. Walter Salles directed The Motorcycle Diaries, a precise and expanding film that follows the early days of Ernesto 'che' Guevara on a motorcycle trip which leads him to find his true calling. This was also an adaption from a book of the same name and stayed very true to it from top to bottom, was executed with grace and respect and created a serene open air atmposhere that sculpted the tonality of the film flawlessly. The man knows what he's doing, however, On the Road is one of those books with such a cult following spanning many different generations and will, no doubt make for an extremely difficult transfer of essence to the screen without making some sacrifices and changes. It always a gamble to take classic novels and transpose them to create a visual component that comes from one minds interpretation of the work. However, in my opinion you could not ask for a better director to attempt the feat of capturing On the Road on the silver screen, I mean lets face it...this man knows road trips like Sarah Palin knows ice hockey. (Shouldn't she know foreign policy? Nah, Hockeys enough.)
Now the question of the casting, I remember reading about an On the Road film being made about 5 years ago with Brad Pitt to play Dean Moriarty; which obviously never happened. Still seemed like a solid choice for the cult hero. Really no matter who they do end up casting, its a risky move to attempt this film, but hey, The Spirit, Watchmen and Fahrenheit 451 are all being released within the next 2 years so...well see how they, and On the Road fare.