EXCLUSIVE: Atlas Entertainment is adapting Tom Wolfe‘s acclaimed book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test into a feature film for Sony Pictures. Adapting is Amit Bhalla & Lucas Jansen, the scribe team behind the Apple TV+ series Hello Tomorrow. Charles Roven will produce, and Ryan Sanak, Vice President of Production at Atlas, will oversee development and have a producing role. Alexandra Wolfe, Tommy Wolfe, and Daryn Roven will serve as Executive Producers.
Directors are already circling the chronicle of the adventures of Ken Kesey after the release of his first novel, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, which became a Best Picture winning classic film released 50 years ago. Together with his group of followers, known collectively as the Merry Pranksters, he set out on a cross-country journey in a bus to spread their counterculture gospel of women’s rights, racial justice, anti-war protesting, and of course, transcendence through experimentation with LSD. The book honed Wolfe’s vivid style of writing that ushered in the New Journalism movement of the era.
The rights to the book are shared between the Fred Roven (Charles Roven’s brother) estate, which is being handled by his son, Daryn Roven, and the Tom Wolfe estate, handled by Alexandra Wolfe, Tommy Wolfe, and Sheila Wolfe.
Bhalla and Jansen were the showrunners on Hello Tomorrow and are proteges of David Milch, of Deadwood and NYPD Blue fame. They are currently developing an ongoing series for WIIP TV based on William Dalrymple’s The Anarchy, about the East India Company’s colonization of India, working alongside Stephen Frears and Walon Green. The duo is also developing an original series, Everyday Is Dollar Day with Succession’s Frank Rich, set up at HBO.
The writers are represented by John Burnham at Atlas Artists. Alexandra Wolfe is represented by CAA.