Analysts say the actor's industry freeze is over even as two other new releases, How to Rob a Bank and Ghost Soldier, struggled to find an audience over the same weekend.
Johnny Depp's first studio lead in eight years has done more than top the North American box office chart. It's rewritten how the industry talks about him.
"Ebenezer," Ti West's horror-tinged take on "A Christmas Carol," opened to $19 million domestically and $42 million worldwide, enough for first place over a weekend that otherwise belonged to disappointments. But the number that's getting repeated in trade circles isn't the box office take. It's a line from Exhibitor Relations analyst Jeff Bock, who told Variety that "Johnny Depp's Hollywood exile is effectively over" and that the film proves he's "once again castable, marketable and capable of opening a studio movie."
That's a big claim for a $19 million opening. But context matters here. Paramount made the film for a cautious $38 million and paid Depp just $5 million upfront, a fraction of his old quotes, with bonuses tied to performance. Audiences gave it an A- on CinemaScore even as critics mostly didn't, and PostTrak data has roughly half of ticket buyers naming Depp as their reason for showing up. For a studio betting carefully on a star who hasn't led a movie since 2018's "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald," that's the return they wanted.
Depp's career stalled after his ex-wife Amber Heard's domestic abuse allegations, which he has denied, led to two defamation trials. A National Research Group study from earlier this year had already flagged him as a top-10 global draw for getting people into cinemas, ranked above Tom Hanks. "Ebenezer" is the first real test of whether that survey translated into tickets, and Bock and others seem convinced it did, even if Variety's own box office analysis calls the opening more solid than spectacular.
What comes next will say more. Depp is already attached to Lionsgate's 2027 thriller "Day Drinker" opposite Penélope Cruz, and Disney is reportedly weighing another "Pirates of the Caribbean" entry. Depp himself has said he'd return as Captain Jack Sparrow mainly to give the character a proper send-off.
Meanwhile, the rest of the weekend chart tells a rougher story. Amazon MGM's heist comedy "How to Rob a Bank," with Nicholas Hoult, Zoë Kravitz and Pete Davidson, opened to just $5 million domestically against a budget north of $40 million, landing at No. 7 with soft reviews and a lukewarm CinemaScore. Sony's "Ghost Soldier," starring Jim Caviezel, did marginally better at $5.2 million but had no CinemaScore to go on and a 36% Rotten Tomatoes score.
Both films opened behind holdovers "The Cat in the Hat" and "Godzilla Minus Zero," with A24's Elizabeth Holmes documentary "You Can See Everything" nearing a rare $100 million domestic milestone for a nonfiction film.
For now, the bigger question is whether Depp's Thanksgiving-week momentum holds. Paramount will be watching second-weekend holds closely, and Disney's Pirates decision likely hinges on exactly that.
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