Hardwicke remains confident that she's going to make a movie. Offers are out to actors now, low-ball figures to big-name stars. She expects to hear back in a matter of days. Redford has even talked to her about playing a minor character because he loves the book and Abbey, who was his friend.

Curiously, the movie will not be shot in Utah. The movie is being produced on an "indie-film budget," Hardwicke said, and filmmakers received a better deal in New Mexico, where tax incentives for movie production are much higher than in the Beehive State.

Hardwicke said she originally scouted the Moab area. "But Utah, unfortunately, hasn't caught on to those incentives yet."

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. spoke about increasing financial incentives for filmmakers in his State of the State address this week.

First assistant director Jaime Marshall said storyboards for "The Monkey Wrench Gang" have already been created, and thrill-seekers can expect to see a jeep-hanging sequence and two high-speed chases. Marshall, who's worked on "Mission: Impossible III" and "The Legend of Zorro," was brought on to the film for his action-filming expertise.

Production begins in May, and the film is expected to wrap up by the end of the year, hopefully in time for the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

"After 'Inconvenient Truth,' we hit a tipping point where almost everybody in America cares about the environment," Hardwicke said of Al Gore's 2006 Sundance hit about the dangers of global warming. "We feel like (Monkey Wrench) is going to be a rallying cry to shake people up to care about the land, the world and do something about this planet."

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E-mail: astowell@desnews.com