Just when you thought Hollywood had run out of ways to retell the tale of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, along comes Pearl and Maxxxine director Ti West. And along comes Paramount Pictures’ Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol. Yes, despite there already existing umpteen iterations of Dickens’ festive ghost story — including, but not limited to, a CGI one. a Bill Murray one. a Muppet one, and an animated Nic Cage one — this Christmas we’ll be seeing Johnny Depp go full Scrooge in West’s star-studded, dark(er) take on the book. And you can check out the movie’s first trailer below;
“It’s good to be back,” says Depp’s balding, snowball-lobbing miser Scrooge in this first Ebenezer trailer — which hits all the familiar beats of A Christmas Carol while teasing some of the film’s starry line-up (Daisy Ridley! Sir Ian McKellen! Tramell Tillman! Andrea Riseborough!). And while we would presume in-context this is potentially old Ebenezer expressing some relief following his three ghostly visitations, the metatextual layer to the line isn’t lost on anyone. It’s clear from this trailer that Paramount is keen to lean into a comeback angle for Depp here as he prepares to lead his first major studio movie since 2018’s Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald and his 2022 legal trial against ex-wife Amber Heard. To wit, this teaser really leans into the Depp of it all, nodding to its star’s past glories (Pirates Of The Caribbean, Edward Scissorhands, and Alice In Wonderland all get mentions) before declaring “The Master Of Misfits Returns” as we see a heavily made-up Depp snarling “Humbug” and debuting a characteristically cantankerous take on Scrooge.
While it remains to be seen how the optics play out on this one — and whether there is an appetite among moviegoers for yet another A Christmas Carol movie — there is, at least, something to be said for Ti West’s investment in the material. Although some will doubtless be a bit mystified to see the man who gave us original bangers like The House Of The Devil, The Innkeepers, and The Roost going down the studio remake/reimagining route, the filmmaker told the crowd at CinemaCon earlier this year that some of his earliest exposures to horror came via A Christmas Carol adaptations, giving him some personal skin in the game with this one. And, in fairness, that genre association has clearly bled into West’s take on the material, as the ghosts glimpsed in the trailer do look suitably unsettling. We’ll see whether Ebenezer‘s good — or if this one’s pure Humbug — when it hits cinemas on 13 November.
