First announced in May of 2005, Variety says that Warner Independent Pictures is moving forward on an adaptation of The Rum Dairy.
Johnny Depp is producing with Graham King, who acquired rights to Hunter S. Thompson’s novel for his GK Films and Depp’s Infinitum Nihil. Bruce Robinson (Withnail and I) will write and direct the adaptation, which Film Engine is also producing.
Depp will play Paul Kemp, a freelance journalist writing for a rundown newspaper in 1950s Puerto Rico and surrounded by a bunch of lost souls bent on self-destruction. The journalist was 22 when he wrote the autobiographical novel and had yet to develop his trademark gonzo style. It was written in 1959 but not published until 1998.
Depp previously starred in the big screen adaptation of Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, published in 1972.
Depp just finished work on Sweeney Todd and is expected to do The Rum Diary after Shantaram, Mira Nair’s adaptation of the novel about an Australian drug addict who resumes his life of crime after escaping to India.
