Johnny Depp Transforms Into Scrooge in New ‘Ebenezer’ Photos, and the Cast List Is Wild

Christmas movie season is still months away, but the marketing machine behind this year’s splashiest holiday release just kicked into a higher gear. Entertainment Weekly’s Fall Movie Preview has unveiled a fresh batch of images from Ti West’s ‘Ebenezer‘, giving fans their clearest look yet at the sprawling, star-studded reimagining of ‘A Christmas Carol’.

The pairing of West and Dickens is an odd one on paper. West made his name with low-budget horror standouts like ‘X’ and ‘Pearl’, a far cry from the cozy, redemption-driven territory of a Victorian ghost story, which is exactly why so many eyes have turned toward this project since it was first announced.

At the center of it all is Johnny Depp, stepping into the role of Ebenezer Scrooge for what’s shaping up to be one of his most closely watched performances in years. The new photos show Depp buried under aging prosthetics alongside Ian McKellen, Tramell Tillman and Rupert Grint, offering a first real glimpse at how the film’s ghostly visitors will look once the movie hits theaters.

Depp has been candid about the pressure of taking on a character so thoroughly associated with past performances. Reflecting on the project, he explained his early hesitation to take the part, saying he initially assumed “there’s no one who can do it as good as Alastair Sim did in the 30s or whatever,” before ultimately deciding that reputation alone shouldn’t stop him from trying something new, according to comments captured by Deadline at CinemaCon.

‘Ebenezer’ leans hard into its ensemble, with McKellen playing the ghost of Jacob Marley, Scrooge’s deceased former business partner who sets the story’s supernatural events in motion. Andrea Riseborough takes on the Ghost of Christmas Past, while Tillman, fresh off his breakout run on ‘Severance’, plays the Ghost of Christmas Present. Rounding out the spirit trio is Daisy Ridley, alongside Rupert Grint as the long-suffering Bob Cratchit, Sam Claflin as Scrooge’s nephew Fred, and Arthur Conti playing a younger version of the title character.

The film’s marketing has leaned into a specific hook: rather than simply retelling the familiar story beat for beat, ‘Ebenezer’ promises to dig into Scrooge’s formative years before he became the miser everyone knows, under the tagline “The name you know, the story you don’t.” Nathaniel Halpern, known for his work on ‘Legion’ and ‘Tales from the Loop’, wrote the screenplay, with Emma Watts producing.

The project also carries some personal significance for Depp, marking his first major studio release since 2018’s ‘Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald’ and 2019’s ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’. His return to a big-budget ensemble film comes as ‘Ebenezer’ finds itself in an unusual head-to-head situation, with Warner Bros. simultaneously developing a competing ‘Christmas Carol’ adaptation directed by Robert Eggers and starring Willem Dafoe as Scrooge.

Whether audiences end up favoring West’s gothic, horror-tinged take or Eggers’ version remains to be seen, but Paramount clearly isn’t waiting around to build buzz. ‘Ebenezer’ arrives in theaters on November 13, positioning it as a Thanksgiving-weekend counterprogramming option well ahead of the traditional December rush of holiday releases.

With EW’s new photos adding fuel to what’s already been a steady drip of first-look material since the film’s poster and trailer debuted earlier this summer, anticipation for ‘Ebenezer’ shows no signs of slowing down as its release date approaches.

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