Quote:
Based on his recent choices, the argument could be made that (after filming the back-to-back "Pirates of the Caribbean" sequels) Johnny Depp is making some very uncommercial movies. He recently finished playing the title character in the movie adaptation of the musical "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" (not a guaranteed money-maker by any stretch of the imagination) and is about to begin production on Mira Nair's "Shantaram," a movie about an Australian drug addict who resumes his criminal career after escaping to India. Now Variety reports Depp is planning to star in the movie version of Hunter S. Thompson's novel "The Rum Diary." Thompson is familiar territory for Depp, as he previously starred as the famed author in 1998's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." "Diary" will find Depp playing Paul Kemp (a pseudonym for Thompson), a freelance journalist who writes for a rundown Puerto Rican newspaper in the 1950s and is surrounded by numerous lost souls bent on destruction. Thompson wrote the autobiographical novel in 1959, but it wasn't published until 1998. Intriguingly, the Warner Independent production will mark the directorial debut of Bruce Robinson, who is best known for writing the screenplays for "The Killing Fields" and "How to Get Ahead in Advertising."
This should be great. I haven't actually READ the book, but I loved Depp's performance of Thompson in Fear and Loathing.