Project To Star Rivera’s Wife Sona Tatoyan & Bill Pullman
While the release date of the Jose Rivera-scripted, Walter Salles-helmed adaptation of “On The Road” remains up in the air, it looks like the writer is set follow in the footsteps of his counterpart revealing to O Globo that he’ll soon embark on his feature-length directorial debut with the female-led road-film “Celestina.”
Loosely based his own acclaimed one-act time-twisting, magical realist play “Cloud Tectonics,” the film will follow a young pregnant woman who goes in search of a family with two actors set to feature in the 2012 shoot. The leading titular role will be filled out by little known thesp Sona Tatoyan — who is married to Rivera and starred in his first effort behind the camera with short film “The Tape Recorder” — with Bill Pullman in an unspecified part.
The Google translation of the O Globo article isn’t the most effective but Rivera (seemingly) adds that the film explore themes relating to identity and “our need to belong to a community” with a character in the script named Anibal sounding somewhat autobiographical as Rivera describes him as “a Puerto Rican who, like me, lives in the U.S. having built his career.” Rivera excitingly adds that he “learned what [he] knows today about casting, shooting, editing and market rules” from Salles, whose also on board as a producer. We’re looking forward to seeing how this one pans out — writers venturing out on their own from successful partnership don’t always pan out well (see Guillermo Arriaga; Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s ex-go-to scribe).
As for Rivera and Salles’ adaptation of Jack Kerouac‘s seminal classic starring Garrett Hedlund and Sam Riley as surrogates of Kerouac himself and Sal Paradise? Rivera throws in a quick update noting that the film itself won’t be completed until year’s end and that it’s unveiling from there will be in the hands of producers, which includes Francis Ford Coppola. We’re thinking Cannes 2012 is a fairly good bet. [via OnTheRoadFilm]