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I’ve been waiting a looong time for this one. The Rum Diary, based off of the novel by Hunter S. Thompson, has been in the works within a few years after Johnny Depp’s amazing performance as Hunter Thompson stand-in Raoul Duke in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Depp plays Paul Kemp, a journalist living in Puerto Rico in the late 1950s and is based on Thompson’s experiences as a journalist there during that time. The film sat in development hell for a long time, filmed in 2009, and has been sitting around without a distributor until now.
For those of you that are only familiar with Thompson’s work via Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Rum Diaries is a significantly more grounded story, though there is plenty of alcoholic excess and Thompson’s typical weirdness. It’s a fantastic book, and I’m liking the way this trailer seems to capture the spirit of it. I can’t wait to check it in theaters!