It is an adaptation of Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel On the Road and stars an ensemble cast featuring Garrett Hedlund, Sam Riley, Kristen Stewart, Alice Braga, Amy Adams, Tom Sturridge, Danny Morgan, Elisabeth Moss, Kirsten Dunst, and Viggo Mortensen.

The story is based on the years Kerouac spent travelling the United States in the late 1940s with his friend Neal Cassady and several other Beat Generation figures who would go on to fame in their own right, including William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg.

After much contemplation, writer's block, and a solemn visit to his father's grave, Sal decides to join his friends in Denver and embarks on the road for the first time.

When they arrive in San Francisco, Dean drives to Camille's place, leaving Sal and Marylou to rent a room, where the two have sex.

The next morning, Marylou leaves to return to her sailor fiancé in Denver, and Sal goes over to visit Dean and Camille, who by now have a child together and are expecting a second.

In the letter, Kerouac envisioned the film to be shot "with the camera on the front seat of the car showing the road (day and night) unwinding into the windshield, as Sal and Dean yak.

[13] Over the years, he hired several screenwriters to adapt the book into a film, including Michael Herr and Barry Gifford, only for Coppola to write his own draft with his son Roman.

[14] In 1995, Coppola planned to shoot on black-and-white 16 mm film and held auditions with poet Allen Ginsberg in attendance but the project fell through.

"[13] Several years later he tried again with Ethan Hawke and Brad Pitt to play Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty respectively, but this project also failed to work.

In 2001, Coppola hired novelist Russell Banks to write the script and planned to make the film with Joel Schumacher directing and starring Billy Crudup as Sal Paradise and Colin Farrell as Dean Moriarty, but this incarnation of the project was shelved as well.

"[15] At the end of 2008, he was about to have the film greenlit when the American economy collapsed and French financier Pathe wanted to make significant cuts to the $35 million budget.

[14] This included Sam Riley as the alter ego of author Jack Kerouac, Sal Paradise, Garrett Hedlund as Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady), who had been linked to the role since September 2007,[16][18] and Kristen Stewart as Marylou.

[21] English actor Tom Sturridge was cast as Carlo Marx (Allen Ginsberg), poet and friend to both Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty.

[22] Salles reunited with some of the crew members whom he worked with on The Motorcycle Diaries, including producer Rebecca Yeldham, screenwriter José Rivera, director of photography Eric Gautier, production designer Carlos Conti, and composer Gustavo Santaolalla.

Before filming began on August 2, 2010, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada,[16][23] the entire cast underwent a three-week "beatnik boot camp," according to Stewart, which involved reading literature pertaining to the Beat Generation[24] and was led by Kerouac biographer Gerald Nicosia.

He played an audio interview that was recorded in 1978 with LuAnne Henderson, Neal Cassady's wife, on whom the book's character Marylou is based.

[25] To give the cast an idea of the kind of film he envisioned, Salles screened Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless and John Cassavetes' Shadows.

[31] Salles originally wanted to shoot in Mexico for several weeks but with the escalating drug wars there, very little was filmed and the production moved to Arizona instead.

[36] Early reviews of On the Road were mainly mixed, although the performance of Garrett Hedlund was often singled out for praise and Eric Gautier's photography also received favorable notice.

The website's critical consensus states: "Beautiful to look at but a bit too respectfully crafted, On the Road doesn't capture the energy and inspiration of Jack Kerouac's novel.

"[39] Entertainment Weekly magazine's Owen Gleiberman wrote, "The best thing in the movie is Garrett Hedlund’s performance as Dean Moriarty, whose hunger for life – avid, erotic, insatiable, destructive – kindles a fire that will light the way to a new era.

This lack of wildness – the absence of danger, uncertainty or a deep feeling for the mad ones – especially hurts Dean, who despite the appealing Mr. Hedlund, never jumps off the screen to show you how Cassady fired up Kerouac and the rest".

[45] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian felt that the film was a "good-looking but directionless and self-adoring road movie", and that it had "a touching kind of sadness in showing how poor Dean is becoming just raw material for fiction, destined to be left behind as Sal becomes a New York big-shot.

[47] Eric Ehrmann, writing in the May 31, 2012 edition of the Huffington Post, blamed Francis Ford Coppola for having "outsourced" the film to "a Brazilian director from a billionaire banking family who gentrified" the novel's characters.