Walter Salles is getting a jump start on the competition and tapping Tron‘s pretty boy resource for his upcoming film On The Road. As tweeted by Production Weekly, Garrett Hedlund is in talks to star in the adaption of Jack Kerouac’s book, which will begin shooting this summer.

Hedlund will play Dean Moriarty, a guy recently released from prison who buddies up with Sal Paradise, a young writer living New York City. From there the two embark on three years worth of adventures traveling the country. The book is well known for being one of the pieces of literature responsible for kicking off the Beat movement, a period led by a group of writers who embraced experimentation and rejected conventional values.

Buzz about On The Road coming to the big screen has been around for quite a while. Salles has been committed to directing since 2005, but that’s nothing compared to the time Francis Ford Coppola’s had invested in this project. He first acquired the rights way back in 1979. In 2005 Coppola had said, “The book is inherently difficult to adapt to the screen, and we’ve never quite found the right combination of director and writer to do it justice until now.” Apparently finding a lead was just as difficult considering it took another five years to check that task off his to-do list.

Minus the pre-Tron frenzy, Hedlund is widely unknown. You might remember him from Friday Night Lights or Four Brothers, but playing Sam Flynn in Tron Legacy will be the film to decide Hedlund’s level of stardom. If Tron meets expectations, not only could Hedlund find himself in the middle of a powerful franchise, but it could open up the door to a vast amount of new opportunities.

By Perri Nemiroff