In 60 seconds: Paramount just dropped the second trailer for Ebenezer — Ti West's dark horror take on A Christmas Carol — and it ends with Johnny Depp winking at the camera: "It's good to be back." It's his first major Hollywood studio film in eight years, and the trailer says he's back to terrify us.
- Paramount released the second official trailer for Ebenezer on October 1–2 — a horror-infused reimagining of Dickens' A Christmas Carol directed by Ti West (X, Pearl, MaXXXine).
- Depp plays Ebenezer Scrooge — salt-and-pepper hair, colored contacts, full scowl — in his first major Hollywood studio film since 2018's Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.
- The trailer leans hard into horror: spectral apparitions treated as genuine scares and a sequence showing Scrooge buried alive. Tagline: "The name you know, the story you don't."
- The ensemble includes Ian McKellen as Jacob Marley, Rupert Grint as Bob Cratchit, Andrea Riseborough, Sam Claflin, Daisy Ridley and more. In theaters November 13, 2026.
- Depp's comeback continues with Lionsgate's Day Drinker (with Penélope Cruz, directed by Marc Webb) on March 26, 2027.
What happened
Paramount Pictures has released the second trailer for Ebenezer, and the mission statement is impossible to miss: this is not your cozy, made-for-TV Christmas Carol. Directed by Ti West, the filmmaker behind the X trilogy, the film turns Dickens' 1843 classic into a gothic horror film — and it looks genuinely incredible.
The footage opens on Depp's Scrooge, a transformation that's hard to overstate: salt-and-pepper hair, colored contacts, a scowl carved into a face that horror lighting does no favors to. The ghosts don't arrive as whimsical spirits — West films them the way he filmed Pearl: as things that should not be in the room with you. The standout sequence shows Scrooge being buried alive — pure claustrophobic dread that tells you exactly what kind of Christmas movie this is.
And then the kicker: Depp ends the trailer with a wink — "It's good to be back."
Latest verified facts
The details, all confirmed within the last 48 hours across Variety, Hypebeast, JustJared and MovieWeb:
The film: officially described as "This November, Johnny Depp is Ebenezer Scrooge. The name you know, the story you don't." It opens only in theaters on November 13, 2026 — six weeks out — kicking off the holiday movie season. Not yet rated by the MPA.
The cast: Depp leads a stacked ensemble — Ian McKellen as Jacob Marley, Rupert Grint as Bob Cratchit, Andrea Riseborough as the Ghost of Christmas Past, Tramell Tillman (Severance) as the Ghost of Christmas Present, Sam Claflin as Fred, Daisy Ridley, Arthur Conti as young Ebenezer, Ellie Bamber as Isabel Fezziwig, plus Henry Lloyd-Hughes and Charlie Murphy. Nathaniel Halpern (Tales from the Loop, Legion) wrote the screenplay; Emma Watts produced.
The comeback: This is Depp's first major Hollywood studio production since 2018's Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald — after which he was replaced as Grindelwald for 2022's The Secrets of Dumbledore. Since then: international and independent films (Minamata, Jeanne du Barry, Modì, Three Days on the Wing of Madness). This summer he surprised Comic-Con by appearing in full Scrooge costume, and the reception was rapturous.
Next: Lionsgate's Day Drinker, co-starring Penélope Cruz and Madelyn Cline, directed by Marc Webb — March 26, 2027.
Why it matters
West is arguably the only interesting choice for this material. He's said his early exposure to Christmas Carol adaptations helped shape his interest in horror — which makes sense, because stripped of Victorian coziness, Dickens' original is genuinely a ghost story about a man tormented by apparitions showing him death. Nobody has filmed it that way at this scale before.
And the timing is theatrical genius. A horror Christmas movie on November 13 lands exactly where audiences are hungry for holiday content but bored of the formula. If it works, it could do for Christmas what prestige horror did for gothic cinema last cycle: prove that genre filmmaking and seasonal box office aren't enemies.
Impact on the USA and the world
For the industry, Ebenezer is a test case for the post-trial Depp economy. The 2022 defamation trial froze his Hollywood career; a major studio, a respected auteur and a beloved IP constitute the biggest possible vote of confidence. If a November horror release with Depp at the center performs, every studio with a "risky" star recalibrates overnight. Paramount has bet that audiences never stopped wanting Depp — they just needed a reason to say it out loud.
What happens next
Six weeks to release, so the marketing ramp accelerates now: a final trailer, late-night appearances, and — given the Comic-Con reception — a real red-carpet moment. Two open questions: the MPA rating (how hard will West go?) and whether the buried-alive imagery survives into the theatrical cut. Either way, November 13 is now circled on every horror fan's calendar.