The Rum Diary is a 2011 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Bruce Robinson, based on the novel of the same name by Hunter S. Thompson, published 1998.

The film stars Johnny Depp, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Rispoli, Amber Heard, Richard Jenkins, and Giovanni Ribisi.

Kemp checks into a hotel, and while idling about on a boat in the sea, meets Chenault, who is skinny-dipping while avoiding a Union Carbide party.

While waiting for an interview, Kemp meets Hal Sanderson, a PR consultant flaunting a luxurious lifestyle, who offers him a side job writing public relations material for his latest venture.

When Sanderson tries to intervene, he is forcefully removed from the dancefloor by locals and led out of the club by Kemp and Sala for his own safety.

To make money to print the last edition, Kemp, Sala, and Moburg place a big cockfighting bet.

They visit Papa Nebo, Moburg's intersex witch doctor, to lay a blessing on Sala's prize cockerel.

The end credits explain that Kemp makes it back to New York, marries Chenault, and becomes a successful journalist, finally finding his voice as a writer.

[8] In 2002, a new producer sought the project, and Benicio del Toro and Josh Hartnett were signed to star in the film adaptation.

[6] In 2007, producer Graham King acquired all rights to the novel and sought to film the adaptation under Warner Independent Pictures.

[7] Depp, who previously starred in the 1998 film adaptation of Thompson's novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, was cast as the freelance journalist Paul Kemp.

[citation needed] About playing the character of Kemp, Depp compared and related it to his previous role in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

The website's critical consensus reads, "It's colorful and amiable enough, and Depp's heart is clearly in the right place, but The Rum Diary fails to add sufficient focus to its rambling source material.

[15] Wyatt Williams, writing for Creative Loafing, argues that "the movie version amounts to Thompson's whole vision of journalism, glossed and made plain by Hollywood.