Johnny Depp’s Scrooge film Ebenezer opens in theaters across the United States and the United Kingdom today, Friday, November 13, and the early verdict is a split one. Critics are divided roughly down the middle, and the biggest argument is not about Depp at all but about what Ti West’s version does to Charles Dickens’s message.
Paramount Pictures, which distributes the film, has spent the final week before release flooding its official YouTube channel with short promos. One, captioned “There’s a little humbug in all of us,” passed 2.7 million views within two days. The studio’s tagline promises “a thrilling reimagining of the most iconic ghost story of all time” and warns: “If you think you know his story, think again.”
What Ebenezer is, in brief
Ti West directs and co-edits from a screenplay by Nathaniel Halpern, adapting Dickens’s 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. The film runs 116 minutes and is pitched somewhere between black comedy, gothic fantasy and ghost story. Paramount’s own copy calls Depp’s miser “deliciously unpleasant.”
The cast is packed with British talent:
- Johnny Depp as Ebenezer Scrooge, with Arthur Conti as the young Ebenezer
- Ian McKellen as Jacob Marley, a part he has said took six days to shoot
- Rupert Grint as Bob Cratchit
- Tramell Tillman playing the second spirit, Christmas Present
- Andrea Riseborough playing the first spirit, Christmas Past
- Sam Claflin as Scrooge’s nephew Fred, with Daisy Ridley and Ellie Bamber also in the ensemble
Filming began in London in January 2026, with the 80-acre Historic Dockyard Chatham in Kent standing in for Victorian streets and waterfronts. Paramount’s marketing line, “The name you know, the story you don’t,” signals that the script expands on the novella rather than retelling it beat for beat.
Why critics are split
The film premiered in New York on November 1, and opened in France on November 11 and in Australia and Brazil on November 12 before reaching the US and UK today. Reviews collected since then sit in mixed territory, with just over half of tallied critics giving it a positive score.
The praise tends to land on the performance. Several reviewers found Depp a solid, even enjoyable Scrooge in a faithful-looking period piece. The pushback is sharper and more specific: some critics argue the film reverses the book’s social conscience, giving Scrooge a narrative justification for his contempt for the poor and recasting the charitable gentlemen he turns away as con artists. For an adaptation of a story that has been about generosity for 183 years, that is a bold swing, and it is the change most likely to divide holiday audiences too.
How it fits the long line of Christmas Carols
Dickens published A Christmas Carol in December 1843, and it has been adapted for film and television many times since. A version that leans into horror is not new territory for the ghosts, but a studio-backed one with a reported $38 million budget and a wide holiday release is. Its real competition is the audience’s memory of the versions they already rewatch every December.
We covered the build-up when Paramount released its Ebenezer featurette with Depp in character as Scrooge in October, and Depp has also been talking up other roles, including his one condition for playing Jack Sparrow again.
The first box office numbers for Ebenezer will arrive with Sunday’s weekend estimates on November 15.
Further reading
Image: Saadick Dhansay, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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