One of the many films that Oscar watchers have been talking about may not see the light of day until next year. Rum Diary for a while now has been pegged as a film with Oscar chances written all over it, but even if it lives up to what plenty are saying, don’t expect to see it during next year’s Oscar broadcast considering it might not be released until 2011.

That’s what Aaron Eckhart told me and here’s one of the possible reasons why: Depp is off shooting Pirates 4 and that renders him unavailable to do press. Eckhart sounded pretty unsure about the release date, and he had this to say:

“I don’t know. I heard next year that’s [when] it’s going to come out. Johnny is making Pirates of the Caribbean and I think that he’s too busy to promote something right now. He’s working in Hawaii. I think they’re going to wait to put it out next year.”

This makes pretty crystal clear sense. Depp is a publicity juggernaut and him promoting a film certainly wont hurt its chances of success. Still, it means that a film is being delayed from seeing the light of day because the main actor won’t be around to toss into a press conference.

I’m sure any Hunter S. Thompson fan will find this as sad news, but who knows, maybe Depp could become available by year’s end. This still isn’t anything official, but from what Eckhart says, we most likely won’t have us some Rum Diary this year…

What do you think?