Furthur is on the road to the big screen.
Atlas Entertainment is developing a feature adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s landmark 1968 counterculture book “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” for Sony Pictures, TheWrap has learned. The project is still in early development, but already on the bus are Amit Bhalla and Lucas Jansen, the writing team behind the Apple TV+ series “Hello Tomorrow!”
Atlas founder Charles Roven will produce, with vice president of production Ryan Sanak overseeing and joining as a producer. Alexandra Wolfe, Tommy Wolfe and Daryn Roven will serve as executive producers.
The book chronicles “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” author Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters’ cross-country journey aboard a converted 1939 International Harvester school bus they named “Furthur” to visit Timothy Leary. That long, strange trip – and its somewhat disappointing end, as the two crowds didn’t exactly vibe – heavily influenced late ’60s counterculture, LSD experimentation and even the genesis of the Grateful Dead.
Wolfe’s immersive reporting style also became a touchstone of the New Journalism movement that included writers like Hunter S. Thompson, Gay Talese and Truman Capote.
Directors are said to be in discussions to get onboard, but no names have surfaced yet. The writers are represented by John Burnham at Atlas Artists. Alexandra Wolfe is represented by CAA. Deadline first reported the news.
And if all of this makes you wonder whatever happened to that Martin Scorsese Grateful Dead movie starring Jonah Hill, it appears we’re still waiting until that deal comes ’round. Where does the time go? Faced with mysteries dark and vast,
statements just seem vain at last.
