Under the fog-soaked streets of London, a familiar figure is stepping once more into the darkness — not as a pirate, a poet, or a lost dreamer, but as one of literature’s most haunted souls.
Johnny Depp has officially taken on the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol, a new adaptation directed by Ti West, the visionary behind V/H/S and Pearl. It is a reinvention of a timeless tale — not as comfort, but as confrontation; a descent into ghosts, guilt, and grace.
For Depp, whose career has long been defined by eccentricity and shadow, the casting feels both startling and inevitable. Few actors have so completely embodied the strange balance between light and dark — between pain and poetry. And now, as he returns to the screen after years of silence and scrutiny, he does so by embracing one of fiction’s greatest transformations.
💬 “It’s time to face the ghost in the mirror,” Depp said quietly in a recent interview, his voice measured, his eyes distant. The line could have come from Dickens himself — or perhaps from Depp’s own life.
The project, written by Nathaniel Halpern (Tales from the Loop), is set for release in November 2026 and promises to be unlike any Christmas Carol before it. Ti West, known for his atmospheric mastery and unnerving sense of tension, has described the film as “a haunting wrapped in redemption.” His version trades cozy Victorian nostalgia for something more psychological — candlelight flickering over cold stone, whispered hymns echoing through empty halls, and the restless breath of ghosts too human to be forgotten.
Set in a London drenched in fog and memory, the film uses its setting not merely as backdrop but as metaphor. The streets of Scrooge’s city — damp, gaslit, endless — mirror the corridors of a man’s conscience. It is in these shadows that Depp’s Scrooge will wander, chased by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and yet to come.
Cinematographer Eliot Rockett (known for The House of the Devil) brings a painterly realism to the frame — candlelight glows like fire on frozen skin, snow falls like dust on regret, and the city seems alive, whispering to its wandering son. The score, composed by Nicholas Britell, weaves strings and silence into something intimate and raw — a lament for lost time and squandered grace.
Early footage shown to insiders reportedly left audiences stunned. Depp’s performance, described as “achingly human,” strips away caricature and grandeur. His Scrooge is not a villain to be redeemed, but a man drowning in his own reflection — trembling, repentant, painfully alive.
When the final bell tolls, it won’t simply mark Christmas morning. It will mark something far deeper — the redemption not just of a character, but of a man reclaiming his craft, his voice, and his light.
Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol is not just another retelling of a classic. It is Johnny Depp’s reckoning — a story about confronting the ghosts that live within us all. And as the film’s final line promises, perhaps softly, beneath the falling snow: every soul, no matter how lost, can find its way back to grace.