Safi – Yesterday, Paramount Pictures released the first trailer for “Ebenezer,”  putting Johnny Depp back in a Hollywood lead for the first time in years. 

The film is a dark retelling of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” from director Ti West, and it opens in theaters on November 13.

The trailer arrived as a surprise. Depp walked into San Diego Comic-Con in full Scrooge costume to introduce it, unrecognizable under the grey whiskers and the scowl.

“Ebenezer” is the first wide release of a Depp movie since 2018’s “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.” 

He spent the gap years on the French-language film “Jeanne du Barry” and behind the camera as a director for “Modi.” 

The trailer opens with a line that plays as a wink, stating “It’s good to be back.” What follows is less a warm carol than a ghost story. 

Ti West built his name on horror with “X,” “Pearl,” and “MaXXXine,” and he filmed Scrooge as a man hunted through his own past, present, and future rather than gently reformed. 

Depp greets Christmas with “Bah! Humbug!” and slams the door on it, then pelts a few passers-by with snowballs by the end, closing on a “Merry Christmas” that sounds surprised to mean it.

The transformation is the draw, and it is familiar ground. Depp built a career on vanishing into strange, sad, funny men: the scissor-handed outsider, the throat-slitting barber of Fleet Street, the Mad Hatter, and the rum-soaked pirate. 

Scrooge is in good hands. The mutter and the lurch carry more than a little Jack Sparrow.

The supporting cast is equally impressive. Ian McKellen stars as the doomed Jacob Marley, while Andrea Riseborough portrays the Ghost of Christmas Past and Tramell Tillman takes on the role of the Ghost of Christmas Present.

Rupert Grint and Daisy Ridley are Bob and Emily Cratchit, Sam Claflin is the nephew Fred, and Arthur Conti plays a young Ebenezer in flashback. 

Nathaniel Halpern wrote the screenplay, and West shot the film in Dublin and London.

“Ebenezer” is not the only Depp project on the way. He is also set to star in “Day Drinker,” an action thriller reuniting him with Penélope Cruz, which Lionsgate will release in March 2027.

For a man written off as past tense, Scrooge is a fitting role to come back on.