The role of Charles Dickens became Johnny Depp’s first major studio job after years overshadowed by legal battles with his ex-wife Amber Heard — Hollywood hopes that the role of Ebenezer will be a breakthrough, reports UNN, citing The Guardian.
"It’s nice to be back," Johnny Depp says in the trailer for the film "Ebenezer," in which he plays the miserly Scrooge — a character created by Charles Dickens. It is his first major job in Hollywood studio cinema in the past eight years.
The message is obvious: this is Depp’s return after years during which his career was overshadowed by legal proceedings with his ex-wife Amber Heard.
Paramount is deliberately drawing attention to Depp’s best-known roles: the trailer begins with references to Captain Jack Sparrow, Edward Scissorhands and the Mad Hatter, followed by the line: "The master of eccentric characters is back."
The film’s release on November 13 will be a kind of test — not only to determine whether Depp can still deliver at the box office, but also to find out whether Hollywood can return him to the ranks of leading mainstream-film stars.
"I think 'Ebenezer' will be an indicator for the industry of how commercially successful Depp remains as an actor," said Robert Mitchell, director of theatrical analytics at Gower Street Analytics.
"In the past, Depp proved that he generates the most profit when he appears in a particular type of film — primarily those featuring vivid, almost grotesque characters; these were the kinds of heroes he began portraying in Tim Burton’s films back in the 1990s.
That is precisely what the marketing campaign for 'Ebenezer' is built around: audiences are being offered not simply actor Johnny Depp, but Depp in a specific, recognizable persona." In 2020, Depp lost a libel case against the publisher of the newspaper The Sun: the judge ruled that the publication’s description of the actor as a "wife-beater" was substantially true.
Two years later, in a separate libel trial in the United States, a jury found that Heard had defamed Depp in her article for The Washington Post and ordered her to pay him $10.35 million (£7.7 million) in damages. At the same time, the jury concluded that one of Depp’s lawyers had also defamed Heard, awarding her $2 million. In 2022, the parties settled the matter concerning the appeals.
After losing in the British court, Depp was asked to leave the role of Gellert Grindelwald in the "Fantastic Beasts" franchise; Mads Mikkelsen replaced him in the third film.
His subsequent work includes the film "Minamata," which grossed less than $1 million worldwide, as well as the film "Jeanne du Barry." The latter’s premiere at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival was accompanied by protests over the organizers’ decision to give Depp a platform to appear.
However, Hollywood now appears increasingly willing to work with the actor again. His next film, "Day Drinker," is scheduled for release in 2027, while producer Jerry Bruckheimer has said that he is negotiating with Depp over a possible sixth installment of "Pirates of the Caribbean."
In "Ebenezer," Depp returns to the eccentric, highly stylized roles that made him famous. The film’s director, Ti West, told Entertainment Weekly that Depp gave Dickens’s dialogue a particular musicality, adding: "Essentially, he is this film." The 63-year-old Depp also played a key role in the film’s marketing campaign. In July, he appeared at the San Diego Comic-Con festival dressed as Scrooge. And this week, he appeared in the same costume in New York’s Bryant Park, where he interrupted a performance by Christmas carol singers and knocked over a Christmas tree.
We would add
"Hollywood stars justify every cent of their fee if they get the right role, but their value drops sharply if the role doesn’t suit them," says David A. Gross, author of the FranchiseRe newsletter. "We just saw Tom Cruise fail with the film \"Digger.\" It’s a great example: after all, it’s hard to find a bigger star than him."
At the same time, he added that the role of Scrooge is a good choice for Depp: it is an eccentric, funny character well known to audiences, allowing the actor to showcase his strengths.
An August report by Puck, based on the results of a test screening in New Jersey, contained encouraging data for Paramount studio.
The film received a score of 80 out of 100 (compared with an average score of 72 for similar films), while Depp himself received 86. Women over the age of 35 responded particularly favorably to the film. However, test-screening results do not guarantee success at the box office.
Paul Dergarabedian, an analyst of market trends at Rentrak, noted that enough time had passed since then for the screening to cease being something viewers constantly thought about. "Critics’ reviews and marketing will matter more than people’s personal feelings about Johnny Depp," he believes.
Although some viewers may decide not to see the film because of their feelings about Depp, Dergarabedian added that it is difficult to establish a direct link between the scandals surrounding the star and the film’s box-office performance.
Tanya Horeck, a professor of film studies and feminist media studies at Anglia Ruskin University, emphasized that Depp had never disappeared from the public eye, remaining the face of Dior’s Sauvage fragrance while his supporters continued to defend him online.
"The idea that this is Depp’s big \"comeback\" suggests that he somehow disappeared," she said. "In fact, the defamation trial largely elevated his star image into that of some kind of mysterious renegade figure."
Speaking about Hollywood’s willingness to cast him again, Horeck said: "Announcements of Depp’s \"comeback\" show how male stars accused of wrongdoing are rehabilitated for public consumption."