Johnny Depp’s Ebenezer Earns Less Than Half Of His Last Big Box Office Debut

Published Nov 14, 2026, 11:16 AM EST

Brennan Klein (he/him) is a senior news writer at Screen Rant, host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast, and contributor at Alternate Ending and Horror Press. He has been writing and podcasting about pop culture (especially horror movies) for over a decade at platforms including Blumhouse, Fangoria, Dread Central, The Backlot, and Arrow in the Head.

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Ebenezer is having a stingier box office debut than Johnny Depp's last big movie.

The three-time Oscar nominee has not starred in a major wide release since 2018. After being accused of domestic abuse by his wife of one year, Amber Heard, Depp sued for defamation in 2019. Heard countersued in 2020. The resulting trials led to the jury finding in favor of Depp on all three claims in his suit and Heard succeeded in one of her three counterclaims. Depp and Heard reached a settlement in 2022. Since then, neither party had starred in a major wide release until 2026's Ebenezer, a Christmas Carol adaptation from Ti West which stars Depp as Scrooge.

Per Deadline, as of Saturday morning, Ebenezer is projected to earn a 3-day total of $20 million or lower at the domestic box office by the end of its opening weekend. This marks less than half of the debut of his most recent domestic wide release, which was the 2018 Wizarding World sequel Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. That movie opened to $62.2 million and ultimately grossed $655.7 million worldwide.

However, Ebenezer is comparing mostly favorably to recent non-sequel, non-prequel, and non-remake Johnny Depp movies. While it has fallen behind titles such as the Tim Burton television adaptation Dark Shadows ($29.7 million) and the Agatha Christie adaptation Murder on the Orient Express ($28.7 million), it has outgrossed the sci-fi movie Transcendence ($10.9 million) and the comedy flop Mortdecai ($4.2 million) and drawn about even with the crime thriller Black Mass ($22.6 million).

Below, see a breakdown of the performance of this type of Depp title since 2010:

TItle	Opening Weekend	Worldwide Box Office
Murder on the Orient Express (2017)	$28.7 million	$352.8 million
Black Mass (2015)	$22.6 million	$100 million
Mortdecai (2015)	$4.2 million	$47.3 million
Into the Woods (2014)	$31 million	$212.9 million
Tusk (2014)	$846,831	$1.9 million
Transcendence (2014)	$10.9 million	$103 million
The Lone Ranger (2013)	$29.2 million	$260.5 million
Dark Shadows (2012)	$29.7 million	$245.5 million
The Rum Diary (2011)	$5.1 million	$30.1 million
Rango (2011)	$38.1 million	$245.7 million
The Tourist (2010)	$16.5 million	$278.8 million

The playing field isn't entirely even, as Black Mass had a Certified Fresh Rotten Tomatoes score of 73% while Ebenezer reviews have been mixed to negative, earning the Dickens adaptation a Rotten Tomatoes splat with 53%. While audiences have not yet weighed in to the point that the movie has earned a Popcornmeter score to compare with Black Mass' 68%, the new movie has a CinemaScore of A-, which is an improvement on Black Mass' B.

If this evens out to Ebenezer having a better trajectory than Black Mass and passing the $100 million milestone, it may ultimately be a modest success. The movie has a mid-tier reported budget of just $38 million and Paramount reportedly spent $50 million on marketing. Because theaters keep half of ticket sales, its estimated break-even point is likely somewhere around $166 million, which it could ultimately make back between its theatrical run and its impending video on demand, streaming, and physical media releases.

It ultimately remains to be seen how Ebenezer performs in the long run, though it may take another movie or two to see if Depp is able to reconnect with his core audience after nearly a full decade out of wide release movies. He will have his next shot at box office success in March 2027, when Lionsgate is set to debut his revenge thriller Day Drinker, which was directed by Marc Webb (The Amazing Spider-Man) and co-stars Madelyn Cline and Penélope Cruz.

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