Johnny Depp’s Ebenezer Opens Today: Scrooge Comeback Tracking a $20–23 Million Weekend

Johnny Depp is back on the big screen today — as Ebenezer Scrooge. Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol, Paramount Pictures’ new adaptation of Dickens’s classic, opens in theatres today, Friday, November 13, with Depp as the miser in his first major studio lead in seven-plus years. Ti West, the horror filmmaker behind the X trilogy, directs, and it arrives with the holiday season’s most closely watched box-office tracking.

The numbers tell a comeback story being measured in real time. Box Office Theory’s tracker has raised its opening-weekend projection to $20–23 million after strong presales, with around $1.5 million expected from previews and a forecast range running to $27 million; traditional studio tracking sits at $20 million. On a reported $38 million net budget, an opening in that range puts the film on a comfortable path. It will not have the weekend to itself: David Leitch’s heist thriller How to Rob a Bank, starring Nicholas Hoult, opens on the same frame. The date is part of the marketing — Friday the 13th for a film selling Dickens as a ghost story first, a redemption tale second.

The film around Depp is stacked. Ian McKellen plays Jacob Marley, Rupert Grint is Bob Cratchit, Sam Claflin plays Fred, and Daisy Ridley and Andrea Riseborough co-star. West directs from a script by Nathaniel Halpern, and the film is rated PG-13 for frightening material. Paramount has put Depp at the centre of the campaign: he appeared in full Scrooge costume at San Diego Comic-Con in July to introduce the first trailer, and the second opens with Depp looking into the camera and saying, “It’s good to be back.” His next Hollywood film is already lined up — Day Drinker, co-starring Penélope Cruz, for Lionsgate.

Ebenezer — by the numbers (trade estimates): Opening weekend tracking: $20–23M (range to $27M). Previews expected: around $1.5M. Reported net budget: $38M. Release: theatres only, November 13, 2026.

Here is the Filmverse take: the cleverest thing about Ebenezer is that it does not ask audiences to forgive or forget anything — it asks them to watch Johnny Depp be strange again. Casting a horror director to make A Christmas Carol frightening, and releasing it on Friday the 13th, turns the film’s biggest risk into its identity: this is not a cosy Christmas movie, it is a ghost story that happens to be about Christmas. The tracking suggests the curiosity is real, and against a $38 million budget the film does not need a record opening — it needs a solid one and good legs into Thanksgiving. If it gets both, “It’s good to be back” becomes the story of the season, not just a trailer line.

Watch the official trailer here:

Sources: Paramount Pictures, Box Office Theory via FictionHorizon and ComicBasics, Variety India. All box-office figures are trade estimates.

Team Filmverse

Filmverse is an independent entertainment news desk covering Bollywood and Indian cinema — news, trailers, reviews and box office, published daily from Mumbai.