Johnny Depp Returns to Studio Films After 8 Years

Caption: Johnny Depp as Ebenezer Scrooge at San Diego Comic-Con, July 23, 2026. Credit: Kevin Paul / WikiPortraits / CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Johnny Depp is returning to a major Hollywood studio release after eight years, but he never stopped making films. His new role as Ebenezer Scrooge brings him back to that part of the industry with Ebenezer, opening November 13.

At the film’s London premiere on November 9, Depp was asked how it felt to return. He questioned the distinction between Hollywood, French and English filmmaking before joking that he had taken “a bit of a vacation.”

The gap refers to major American studio releases, not an eight-year retirement from acting. His last such film was Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald in 2018, according to PEOPLE and ABC News.

The work continued outside Hollywood

Depp starred in the French production Jeanne du Barry, which premiered at Cannes in 2023. He also directed Modi: Three Days on the Wing of Madness, which premiered at Spain’s San Sebastián Film Festival in 2024.

Those projects continued a career whose public profile had been dominated by his litigation with former wife Amber Heard. Their 2022 defamation trial produced findings against both parties on different claims, and they reached a settlement that December.

Ebenezer changes the distribution and scale of his next release rather than marking his first return to work.

Finding a way into Scrooge

Directed by Ti West, the film adapts Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Scrooge’s encounters with his past, present and future provide the familiar framework for the holiday story.

The ensemble includes Rupert Grint, Andrea Riseborough, Sam Claflin, Daisy Ridley, Tramell Tillman and Ian McKellen.

Depp offered a more specific explanation of his performance at a November 1 screening in New York. Speaking to PEOPLE, he described costume as a character’s “suit of armor” and said his Scrooge was “trying to make himself invisible to the world.”

That gives the role a clearer emotional starting point than the broad label of a Hollywood comeback: a highly visible actor playing a man determined to withdraw from others.

Another American release is already scheduled

Depp’s next film is Day Drinker, a thriller directed by Marc Webb and featuring Penélope Cruz and Madelyn Cline. PEOPLE reported a March 26, 2027 release date and noted that it would be Depp and Cruz’s fourth film together.

A return to Pirates of the Caribbean is less definite. Depp expressed interest in working with producer Jerry Bruckheimer again and in giving the series a fitting conclusion, but those remarks did not accompany a casting announcement.

The confirmed near-term project is Ebenezer. Its November 13 opening gives audiences the first opportunity in eight years to see Depp lead a new major American studio release.

References: PEOPLE - Depp reflects on eight-year studio gap | ABC News / Good Morning America - Depp returns as Scrooge