SEAN PENN PENS INTO THE WILD

Sean Penn writes screenplay adapted from novel Into The Wild.

Sean Penn began a 10 year courtship with the McCandless family after first discovering Jon Krakauer’s novel Into The Wild in his neighborhood bookstore which documented their son Chris’ escape from modern society to live off the land in Alaska.

Sean was so taken with Krakauer’s tome that he read it cover to cover twice and 10 years later the images were still very much vivid in his mind when he began writing the screenplay.

“The movie that we made is almost identical to what I walked away with from Jon Krakauer’s book. So much so that when after 10 years the opportunity came to make it I hadn’t reread the book after 10 years and I started my first draft, the adaptation without rereading the book. And there were very few changes I ended up making once I did reread the book.”

Sean also met with Chris McCandless’ family while writing the book including his sister Carine played by Jena Malone in the film and his parents Walt and Billie played by William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden, who provided tremendous insight into Chris.

“They influenced the writing but I think much of that again Krakauer had done the job and he had done it so well that in the nuances of things that he wrote I found that there was a lot of affirmation going on in my research of why those things had struck me by his book because he had seen many of the same things. But I did continually share up to page by page rewrites while I was shooting, sharing them with the family as I had promised them that I would.”

Into the Wild which is also directed by Penn, starring Emile Hirsch as Chris McCandless opens Friday, October 5th in theaters nationwide.