Updated: This is all confirmed. As you were.
It has been a long, long wait for Johnny Depp‘s “The Rum Diary.” Directed by Bruce Robinson, the film was shot in the spring of 2009 and there’s been little word on it since despite its rather fetching cast of Depp, Aaron Eckhart, Amber Heard, Giovanni Ribisi and Richard Jenkins. Last fall, Graham King acquired the film for his distribution company DistrictFilms that he founded with Sony vet Peter Schlessel and former Apparition chief Bob Berney. A fall 2011 release was announced but little in the way of anything concrete has been spoken of.
Well, a number of sites are currently attending CinemaCon, an industry confab and apparently at the launch party last night a still from “The Rum Diary” flashed on a screen with the date October 28, 2011. Being an industry conference, with many studios pimping their wares to theater owners, we wouldn’t be surprised if potential dates are being tossed around, but don’t consider it 100% locked just yet.
Based on the novel by Hunter S. Thompson, Depp plays Paul Kemp (reprising his role somewhat as the Thompson stand-in from “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas“), a freelance journalist who finds himself drawn to the Caribbean at a critical turning point in his life. Self reflection and destruction ensue. Robinson recently revealed that working on the film made him turn to drinking again. So yeah, it sounds great but we hope it’s worth the long wait.
“The Rum Diary” was rumored for Cannes last year — obviously that never happened — and there are some rumors floating it will make it to the Croisette this year. Depp has also talked about taking the film on a tour of colleges though that seems more like a wish than anything concrete. Either way, we just hope it finally makes it into theaters in 2011 after such a long wait. If it does open on October 28th, it will likely be in a limited platform style release, but the only competition that weekend so far is Andrew Niccol‘s “Now” and the low-budget horror “Dibbuk Box.” [via ComingSoon]
