Van Sant to direct 'Kool-Aid Acid' film

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 28 (UPI) -- A big-screen adaptation of Tom Wolfe's 1968 counterculture book "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" is in the works, The Hollywood Reporter said.

The project reunites director Gus Van Sant and writer Dustin Lance Black, who previously worked together on the upcoming release "Milk," a bio-picture about California's first openly gay elected official, late San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, the entertainment industry trade newspaper said.

"Milk" stars Sean Penn as the title character.

"Kool-Aid" is about how the late author Ken Kesey and cohorts who called themselves the Merry Pranksters drove across the United States in a DayGlo-painted school bus, "reaching personal and collective revelations through the use of LSD and other psychedelic drugs," The Hollywood Reporter said.

Kesey, who also wrote "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," died in November 2001.