Johnny Depp’s ‘The Rum Diary’ finally gets a pour
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‘The Rum Diary,’ the Johnny Depp-starring version of Hunter S. Thompson’s semi-autobiographical novel, is finally coming to theaters.
The movie will be released by start-up distributor FilmDistrict, which announced Tuesday that it would bring out the movie Oct. 28. Graham King, who founded FilmDistrict, helped produce the picture before he founded his distribution arm.
The film wrapped production in 2009 in Puerto Rico but had been caught in distribution limbo. Thompson’s book, which he wrote in the early 1960s, faced a much larger delay: It took nearly 40 years to get published.
Set at a Puerto Rican newspaper in the 1950s, ‘Rum Diary’ centers on Paul Kemp (Depp as the Thompson stand-in) and is a story of personal and professional intrigue -- and heavy drinking -- among American expats. It’s based loosely on Thompson’s own experiences on the island.
Depp and Thompson were close in the last years of the author’s life, with the author said to have shown the ‘Rum Diary’ manuscript to the actor.
-- Steven Zeitchik
