Johnny Depp took $5 million for 'Ebenezer,' a cautious bet on his Hollywood return

Johnny Depp's first major studio movie in nearly eight years is arriving on a budget built for caution. Paramount paid the actor $5 million to play Ebenezer Scrooge in "Ebenezer," Variety reported, a fraction of his past studio paydays, with bonuses tied to how the film performs in theaters.

The studio spent $38 million to produce Ti West's take on "A Christmas Carol" and roughly $50 million on marketing, according to Variety, which said Paramount declined to comment on budgets. The film opens in theaters worldwide Friday, Nov. 13. Variety reports it is tracking for an opening of about $20 million in North America, plus another $20 million from 63 overseas markets.

Those numbers frame the release more clearly than any comeback narrative. Paramount isn't asking "Ebenezer" to be an event. It is asking a holiday movie with a famous star to earn back a mid-size investment, and the deal structure means Depp profits mainly if audiences actually show up.

Early reactions favor Depp more than the film

Paramount held press screenings in the days before release and let attendees post short reactions on social media, while full reviews are embargoed until Nov. 12. The film premiered Nov. 1 at the Whitby Hotel in New York, followed by a London premiere in Leicester Square on Nov. 9.

Much of the early response centers on Depp himself. UK Film Critic Phil Roberts wrote that "Johnny Depp is magnetic throughout Scrooge's soft redemption arc." FilmSpeak's Tom Chatalbash called the movie a "wickedly fun holiday treat and strong comeback vehicle for its star," adding that "Depp is a fiendish delight as Scrooge." Critics Choice member Clarence Moye put the performance "standing with George C. Scott as the best of the modern Scrooges," a high bar given that Scott's 1984 television version remains a perennial favorite.

The pushback is less about Depp than about the movie's reason to exist. Critic Ren Vieira praised the set and sound design but wrote that "it's just Depp doing cooky Scrooge, nothing more than his old tricks." MaryAnn Johanson needed two words: "Utterly superfluous." Robert Ortiz called the film technically well made but faulted it for being forgettable and dull for anyone who already knows the story. Several posts that liked the movie conceded the same point, describing it as a fairly standard adaptation dressed in gothic clothing.

That recurring complaint looks like the real commercial risk. Press-screening reactions tend to skew warm, and the fact that even friendly viewers keep saying the film doesn't reinvent its source suggests the Nov. 12 reviews could be more divided. A movie whose selling point is a star performance inside a familiar story needs word of mouth to carry it through December, and "well made but unnecessary" is a hard phrase to sell.

What West brings may be the best counterargument. Reactions repeatedly describe a darker, horror-leaning version modeled on Hammer-style gothic films, which fits the director of the "X" trilogy. One viewer warned that it is not for kids, a detail families planning a holiday outing will want to know. Paramount's marketing line leans into the idea of novelty: "The name you know, the story you don't." Nathaniel Halpern wrote the screenplay, and the ensemble includes Ian McKellen, Rupert Grint, Daisy Ridley, Sam Claflin, Andrea Riseborough, Tramell Tillman, Arthur Conti, Ellie Bamber, Henry Lloyd-Hughes and Charlie Murphy.

Theater owners see a test of the movie, not the star

Depp's last Hollywood studio release was 2018's "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald." Warner Bros. pushed him out of that franchise in 2020 after he lost a libel case in Britain against The Sun, a tabloid that had called him a "wife beater." In 2022, a jury in Fairfax, Virginia, sided with him in his U.S. defamation trial against ex-wife Amber Heard, in which each accused the other of domestic abuse and defamation; Depp was awarded $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages, and Heard won $2 million in compensatory damages.

Since then he has worked mostly outside Hollywood, starring in the French period film "Jeanne du Barry" in 2023 and directing the 2024 biopic "Modì, Three Days on the Wing of Madness," in which he did not act. He also appeared in the 2020 drama "Minamata," kept a Dior brand deal that Variety valued at $20 million and collected career honors from international festivals.

Exhibitors who spoke with Variety expect the box office to reflect the film's quality more than lingering controversy. Mark O'Meara, who runs theaters in Fairfax, the same town that hosted the trial, said some of his customers are eager and others indifferent. "I don't think it's a polarizing thing," he said. Classic Cinemas CEO Chris Johnson said he hadn't heard of anyone skipping the movie because of Depp. "The public seems to be pretty forgiving," he said.

Regal CEO Eduardo Acuna was more bullish about the casting itself. "Even though this story predates him, it feels like the character was written for Johnny Depp," he said.

Audience research points the same way. A National Research Group study from April 2026 ranked Depp among the top 10 actors who would most make people interested in seeing a new movie in theaters, behind Margot Robbie and ahead of Tom Hanks. Kevin Goetz, founder and CEO of Screen Engine/ASI, told Variety, "Audiences don't care. He's still one of the biggest movie stars on the planet." Goetz argued that Depp's appeal was never wholesome to begin with. "Johnny's image was built on being a bad boy," he said. "He ain't America's dad."

That reasoning has a logic to it. Depp's biggest hits, from Jack Sparrow in "Pirates of the Caribbean" to Willy Wonka in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," turned odd or prickly characters into crowd-pleasers, and Scrooge sits squarely in that line. The harder obstacle is the competition from the past. Alastair Sim's 1951 film, Bill Murray's 1988 comedy "Scrooged" and Disney's 2009 motion-capture version with Jim Carrey all compete for the same seasonal viewing. That Carrey film, which Variety says grossed $325 million against a $200 million budget, is a cautionary tale about overspending on this material, and Paramount's lean budget reads as a lesson learned.

Paramount did spend on visibility. Depp made a surprise appearance in costume at San Diego Comic-Con, tossing candy to the crowd, a stunt that signaled the studio was comfortable putting him front and center.

The stakes extend past this film. Depp next stars in Lionsgate's thriller "Day Drinker," directed by Marc Webb and co-starring Penélope Cruz, Madelyn Cline and Manu Ríos, due March 26, 2027. Disney is weighing how "Ebenezer" lands, including any backlash, as it considers another "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie, Variety reported, citing sources. Depp has said he is open to a return, though only on limited terms: "the only involvement I really want to have, truly, is just to send them off on a better note."

A solid run for "Ebenezer" would give Disney cover to make that call. A soft one wouldn't necessarily doom Depp's studio career, given the modest costs, but it would make the case that his drawing power lives more in surveys than in ticket sales.