Jack Sparrow finds the Rum

Johnny Depp attached himself to The Rum Diary. The movie which is still set to be helmed by Withnail and I director Bruce Robinson was originally met with critics predicting that the film might finally bring Depp that Oscar win he has come so close to achieving in the past. Some 26 months of little activity and it now finally looks like a start date has been given on the movie. Variety report that Depp is first to complete Mira Nair's movie Shantaram before the end of the year when he will move on and work on The Rum Diary, with Dark Shadows (which we reported last week) and a possible Alexander Litvinenko movie battling it out to be the next one after that. Of course things can change all the time and there's bound to be a Tim Burton movie lodged in their somewhere to tie up Deep again for a few months but that seems like the current plan.

Depp will play Paul Kemp, a freelance journo writing for a rundown newspaper in 1950s Puerto Rico and surrounded by a bunch of lost souls bent on self-destruction. The journo 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.

The Rum Diary novel was written by Hunter S. Thompson (who actually committed suicide in the last couple of years), who also scribed Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas which Depp starred in for director Terry Gilliam in 1998. I should really get round to seeing Fear and Loathing, it's just I'm not a fan of Terry Gilliam at all and I try and avoid his movies wherever possible. Then again, I think I said to myself I was going to get round to watching it two years ago when this movie was first greenlit and I never did.