"Ebenezer," a gothic reimagining of Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" starring Johnny Depp as Ebenezer Scrooge, opened in theaters Friday from Paramount, arriving on a wave of divided early reviews that nonetheless largely agreed on one point: Depp's performance.
Directed by Ti West from a script by Nathaniel Halpern, the roughly $40 million film recasts the Dickens classic as a darker, horror-inflected story, with Depp playing Scrooge opposite Rupert Grint. First reactions circulating after press screenings, compiled by KinoCheck, ranged from calling it a stylish holiday treat that adds genuinely new layers to the familiar story, to dismissing it as a handsome but hollow retread that leans too hard on atmosphere.
Depp's performance as the throughline
Critic Kevin Travers called Depp's turn "outstanding" and the film "deeply moving," a view echoed across much of the early commentary even from reviewers otherwise cool on the movie. One roundup of the divided reactions noted that even detractors tended to carve out an exception for Depp's Scrooge, framing it as the one element most reviewers could agree on.
The release itself is notable as a test of audience appetite for Depp in a high-profile studio role, following the defamation trial that dominated headlines around his career in recent years. Early audience tracking cited by entertainment outlets put the film's opening-weekend reception in solidly positive territory, even as critics' scores skewed more mixed.
What's next
"Ebenezer" opens during a crowded holiday-season box office window, competing for screens against other late-year releases as studios jockey for position ahead of Thanksgiving. Paramount has leaned heavily on Depp's name and the film's gothic visual style in marketing, a bet that the starkly different take on a two-century-old story — and its starriest performance — will be enough to pull in both horror fans and holiday-movie regulars over its opening weeks.