Variety is reporting that Brazilian director Walter Salles is re-teaming with the screenwriter of The Motorcycle Diaries, Jose Rivera, to adapt Phillip Meyer’s debut novel, American Rust, for the big screen (they’re also working together on a movie version of Junot Diaz’s novel, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao).
The rights to American Rust were picked up by Couples Retreat producer Scott Stuber, with Universal getting first crack at funding the film through the first look deal Stuber has with the studio. The book is about two friends from a depressed Pennsylvanian steel town, who dream of escaping to California, but who see those hopes put in jeopardy when they are implicated in a crime.
Salles’ films are always worth a watch, and even failures like Dark Water have been fairly interesting, while the like of Motorcycle Diaries, Central Station and Linha De Passe have been excellent.
With American Rust recently short-listed for the 2009 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, it could be a potent combnation of director and source material.