"Rum Diary" Update

Entertainment Weekly offers a small piece about Johnny Depp's upcoming project, The Rum Diary:

Depp returns to Hunter Thompson

Johnny Depp will produce and star in Warner Independent's adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's autobiographical 1959 book The Rum Diaries. Depp will play Paul Kemp, a freelance newspaper journalist in 1950s Puerto Rico who is surrounded by a group of self-destructive lost souls.

Thompson wrote the novel when he was 22, before he developed his trademark ''gonzo'' style of writing. Though written in 1959, Rum Diaries was not published until 1998.

Depp is producing with Graham King, who acquired rights to the book for his GK Films and Depp's Infinitum Nihil. Bruce Robinson (Withnail and I) will write and direct the adaptation.

Depp previously starred in a movie adaptation of Thompson's 1972 novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The actor just finished shooting Sweeney Todd and is expected to start work on Rum Diaries after he wraps Shantaram, Mira Nair's adaptation of the novel about an Australian drug addict who returns to a life of crime after escaping to India. Last week, it was announced that Depp's production company was working with King's GK Films on a movie adaptation of the 1960s supernatural soap opera Dark Shadows.