Few authors have had cinematic champions as powerful as Hunter S. Thompson.

For that, you can thank Johnny Depp.

The charismatic actor brought Thompson’s doppelganger, Dr. Raoul Duke, to deranged (and disturbingly accurate) life in 1998’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”

If you’ve never seen it (or, more importantly, read it), the drug-addled chronicle of a weekend in Sin City, where he’s ostensibly been sent to cover a stock car race, is one of the great examples of the 1970s flowering of New Journalism that Thompson helped invent.

Depp presided over Thompson’s funeral in 2005 after the author’s death by self-inflicted gunshot wound. The actor helped launch Thompson’s ashes from a giant cannon set up on the grounds of his Colorado compound.

Now Depp is at it again with “The Rum Diary,” which is Thompson’s fictionalized account of his early days as reporter in Puerto Rico. The movie debuts on Oct. 28 with Depp in the lead role as itinerant reporter Paul Kemp.

Here’s the trailer, courtesy of The Wrap.

And, for good measure, here’s some of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”