Depp didn’t come out of the crucible with his career intact. He was asked to resign from the Fantastic Beasts franchise—though Warner Bros. still pai
Depp didn’t come out of the crucible with his career intact. He was asked to resign from the Fantastic Beasts franchise—though Warner Bros. still paid Depp his full $16 million salary—and his former agent claimed Disney dropped him from the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Still, he never really went away. In fact, like so many guys who have been supposedly “canceled,” he wormed his way back in quite easily. In 2023, he got a standing ovation at Cannes for his role as Louis XV in the French film Jeanne du Barry. The next year, he directed the movie Modì, Three Days on the Wing of Madness. Meanwhile, producer Jerry Bruckheimer confirmed in 2025 that he’s been talking to Depp about a sixth Pirates film after all. All the while, Depp has also kept his massive brand deal as the face of Dior’s Sauvage.
“I don’t feel boycotted by Hollywood because I don’t think about Hollywood,” Depp announced imperiously a few years back. “I don’t have much further need for Hollywood.” Enter Ebenezer, his official return to…Hollywood. Which he doesn’t need or think about. At all.
Call it Christmas-washing: What could be more wholesome and uncontroversial than A Christmas Carol? According to Variety, Paramount paid Depp just $5 million—a substantial drop-off from the days when he could reportedly command $50 million for a single film—and only spent $38 million to produce the movie, hedging its bets. Still, this film is a pretty hot welcome back to American movie screens, major marketing campaign and all.
Unfortunately, Depp’s mediocre performance in Ebenezer doesn’t dispel the sour scent of desperation that hangs over his career. Scrooge is one of the most unlovable characters in all of literature, and Depp’s charm does not shine through the gnarled facial prosthetics. He plays the archetypal miser in the broadest of ways, spending much of the nearly two-hour movie alternating between exaggerated expressions of cantankerousness and horror. Depp’s inspiration for the role might as well have been Oscar the Grouch, though one with less educational value who’s hollow at his core. At various points, the actor campily throws himself into physical comedy that is at odds with the horror-soaked vibe of West’s production.
Knowing this is a test run for Depp’s uncanceling, viewers will find it strenuous not to see Ebenezer as a wink-filled plea for absolution. “I’m not the man I was!” his character screams over and over. “Allow me my redemption.” To which the answer—or my answer, at least—is elementary: Bah, humbug.
