Name: Ebenezer
Director: Ti West
Released: 2026
Cast: Johnny Depp

Every generation gets the Scrooge it argues about, and the first people to see Ti West’s Ebenezer have started arguing about Johnny Depp‘s. The surprise is what they are arguing over. Across the earliest verdicts from the press and influencer screenings, the man playing Scrooge is the part almost nobody disputes. The dispute is about the film built around him.

That is not quite the story the campaign has been telling. Ebenezer has been sold as a comeback, and Variety notes it is the first Hollywood studio film Depp has made since his highly publicized trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard. Read the reactions closely, though, and the comeback splits in two: the actor’s, which the first critics largely grant, and the film’s case for existing at all, which they cannot agree on.

The praise lands on the performance

Critics Choice member Clarence Moye called the film “a pleasant surprise” and went straight to the lineage: Depp is “great, standing with George C. Scott as the best of the modern Scrooges.” UK critic Phil Roberts found him “magnetic throughout Scrooge’s soft redemption arc.” FilmSpeak’s Tom Chatalbash called him “a fiendish delight as Scrooge” and the film a “strong comeback vehicle for its star.”

The most useful endorsement comes from a reluctant viewer. JoBlo’s JimmyO admitted he “was not terribly excited about the prospect of another Christmas Carol,” then called Depp’s work “a layered performance,” conceding it is “cartoonish at times” but “far more layered than the trailer would suggest.” His verdict: “It’s my favorite Depp performance in a few years.”

Measured against Alastair Sim

Moye’s George C. Scott benchmark is a demanding one, and it is not the one Depp picked for himself. At the Beverly Hills premiere of his directorial effort Modì, he told Entertainment Tonight, as TheWrap reported, that Alastair Sim’s turn in the 1951 British film Scrooge was the portrayal that inspired him. “It’s one of my favorite films of all time. His performance is perfection,” he said, adding that he was after “a different angle on Scrooge.”

That is the real test in this role. JoBlo puts it plainly: Depp is joining “the legion of extraordinary actors who have played Ebenezer Scrooge,” and each new Scrooge is judged less against the actor’s own past than against everyone who played the miser before him. On that ledger, the early reactions give Depp a seat at the table. Whether the film earns one is another matter.

The sceptics mostly aim past him

The negative reactions share one complaint, and it is redundancy. Robert Ortiz called Ebenezer “fine I guess,” granting that Depp “certainly looks and acts the part” while finding the film “forgettable and just boring, especially if you’ve seen a Christmas carol before.” MaryAnn Johanson needed two words: “Utterly superfluous.” Lewis Powell was the harshest, sparing only “the production design and score” and calling everything else “chaotic, mismatched and horrifically ill judged.”

Only one of the sceptics turns the charge on Depp directly. Ren Vieira praised the “fantastic set design, production & sound design” but found “nothing’s distinct or unique about this version,” adding that “it’s just Depp doing cooky Scrooge, nothing more than his old tricks.”

The irony nobody can unsee

The most revealing reaction came from a critic who mostly liked the film. DawsOnScreen found it “a much more gothic take on A Christmas Carol” than expected and a case for West handling “bigger blockbuster stories,” then wrote that “it does feel like this serves more as a way to get Johnny Depp back into the mainstream than it does to create a unique film experience. The irony of the story used is certainly not lost on me.”

That is the risk of casting a returning star as literature’s most famous penitent. The redemption arc reads as biography whether the film intends it or not, and it can flatter the actor while shortchanging the work. Screen Rant, rounding up the same posts, expects a mixed reception overall, with Depp’s performance “a consistent highlight” that is “inevitably intertwined with the controversy surrounding the actor.”

The audience data points the same way. Puck reported, as Enstarz relays, that a test screening in Paramus, New Jersey, in August gave the film a score of 80 and Depp a separate score of 86. Test scores are not box office, and Puck itself noted they do not consistently predict ticket sales. The gap is still the story in miniature: the actor rating above his own movie.

What happens next

Ebenezer is directed by West from a screenplay by Nathaniel Halpern, with Rupert Grint as Bob Cratchit, Andrea Riseborough as the Ghost of Christmas Past, Tramell Tillman as the Ghost of Christmas Present, Ian McKellen as Jacob Marley, and Sam Claflin and Daisy Ridley as Fred and Clara. It had its world premiere at Leicester Square in London on November 9 and opens in theaters on Friday, November 13, from Paramount. Screen Rant puts the budget at $38 million, against $12.2 million for West’s entire X trilogy.

Full reviews arrive late. Showbiz411 reports the embargo lifts at noon on Thursday, November 12, which MovieWeb notes is the same day as the Thursday night previews. MovieWeb reads that timing as a lack of studio confidence; Enstarz cautions that the schedule alone does not prove why it was chosen. Screen Rant adds that the prospects of Depp’s next film, Day Drinker, Marc Webb’s supernatural revenge thriller with Madelyn Cline and Penélope Cruz, will look clearer once Ebenezer has played.

Dickens gave Scrooge a single night to change. Depp’s reviews get less than a day before the box office answers back.