It is fair to say that, professionally speaking, Johnny Depp has had a quiet few years. Since he and Amber Heard sued each other amid a whirlwind of genuinely ugly accusations in 2019, and went to trial in 2022, Depp has struggled to reclaim his position in Hollywood.
His 2020 film Minimata made less than a million dollars at the box office. Jeanne du Barry fared better in 2023, although its Cannes premiere was marked by feminist demonstrations and an open letter signed by 100 members of the French film industry, furious that the festival appeared to be offering alleged abusers institutional protection. Aside from that, he voiced a Puffin called Johnny Puff in a cartoon series called Puffins, and that’s about it.
Rather, it was. Because now Depp is back on top. Yesterday he made a surprise appearance at Comic-Con in San Diego in costume as Ebenezer Scrooge, shuffling and slurring in front of a crowd of delighted onlookers. He shouted insults (“Have you people no jobs?”) and made Trump jokes (threatening to put a tariff on some railings) and interrupted a Directors on Directing panel to wander about and mutter.
The reason for Depp’s appearance is simple. Paramount has made a film about Ebenezer Scrooge, and he is playing the lead. The trailer could not be more clear that this is to be Depp’s big comeback vehicle, either. As Scrooge hobbles about the screen, the trailer’s captions proclaim: “He brought us Jack Sparrow, Edward Scissorhands and the Mad Hatter. This November, the master of misfits returns.” And then Depp, his face as close to the camera as it can possibly be, whispers, “It’s good to be back.”
It is hard to see how the trailer could have made the comeback any more explicit, although some people might take the trailer’s wording with a pinch of salt. It is, after all, a piece of extraordinary public relations to take a man who was found by a UK civil court to have repeatedly punched his wife in her head while screaming “I fucking hate you” and rebrand him as “the master of misfits”. It does seem like booking Bill Cosby for a film and calling him “TV’s Mr Sex”.
Still, the trailer has received almost universal approval from commenters on YouTube, whose feedback ranges from “I think many will go see this film even if it’s not good, just to see Johnny back on the screen” to “Good to see Johnny Depp back!!!”. Which is great and everything, but where were you when Minimata came out, you cowards?
And in fairness, the film does seem to offer precisely what people expect from a mainstream Johnny Depp performance. His Scrooge is an overblown caricature of a thing, all hunched and cackling, and filled with the sort of overblown reaction shots that have come to be his stock in trade. His eyes bulge. His tongue sticks out. He folds his mouth upside down like Silvio from The Sopranos. It’s like watching Jack Sparrow after a few too many years on the pies, or Willy Wonka after being hauled to a riverbank with a lawn rake after being found face-down.
What’s more, Ebenezer is being directed by Ti West, a man who knows his way around a horror movie better than almost anyone. He made MaXXXine, Pearl and House of the Devil, and there are elements of the Ebenezer trailer that hint at something much darker than its breezy homecoming trailer would suggest.
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That would be a good thing, because as things stand, it would take all manner of mental gymnastics to square the cutesy double-taking character in the trailer with a man who, let’s not forget, was accused of banging his wife’s head on a countertop and then writing messages about her sexual activity on the walls in his own blood. Perhaps a horror movie would be the best way to ease him back into the mainstream. If nothing else, it would fit the public perception of him.
As comebacks go, it’s hard to fault the boldness here. The true test will come in November, when audiences will either flock to Ebenzer or stay away in droves. Still, it could be worse. At least Depp isn’t selling cheap rings on the internet like Kevin Spacey yet.
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