Paramount has unveiled the first trailer for "Ebenezer," a reimagining of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" that casts Johnny Depp as literature's most famous miser and hands the reins to horror specialist Ti West. The film is set to open in theaters on November 11, 2026, arriving less than two weeks after Halloween and well ahead of the traditional holiday movie corridor.
The trailer, which landed online this week, leans heavily into the macabre. Depp's Scrooge is shown as a hollowed, ghost-pale figure shuffling through candlelit London interiors, while glimpses of spectral visitors suggest West has treated the source material less as a warm fireside tale and more as a haunting. The studio is positioning the project as a fantasy-comedy, though the footage trades in dread as much as whimsy, with distorted carols and a Marley's ghost that appears to owe more to Gothic horror than to Victorian sentiment.
It marks a notable pivot for West, who built his reputation on slow-burn scare pictures before finding a broader audience with a recent trilogy of slasher films. Here he works from a much larger canvas and a considerably bigger budget, and the trailer suggests he has not sanded down his instincts to fit the studio mold. Whether that sensibility can coexist with a story that traditionally ends in redemption is the central question the marketing is deliberately leaving open.
Depp's casting is the production's loudest statement. The actor has spent recent years in a mix of independent European productions and smaller period dramas, and "Ebenezer" represents his most prominent studio vehicle in some time. The role demands a transformation from sneering isolation to genuine remorse, and the trailer offers only the first half of that arc: a man hunched over ledgers, dismissing charity collectors, and glaring at the world as though it owes him a debt. The ghost of his late partner, Jacob Marley, is played by Ian McKellen, whose brief appearance in the footage carries the weight of an old friend delivering a sentence rather than a warning.
Around Depp, the ensemble is unusually deep for a holiday release. Rupert Grint takes on Bob Cratchit, the put-upon clerk whose family stands in for everything Scrooge has refused to value. Andrea Riseborough appears as the Ghost of Christmas Past, Tramell Tillman as the Ghost of Christmas Present, and Daisy Ridley as Emily Cratchit, with Sam Claflin as Fred, Scrooge's persistent nephew. Charlie Murphy also features in a cast that gives West a range of performers not typically associated with supernatural spectacle.
Paramount has not disclosed a runtime, and tracking data is not yet available; the film's TMDb rating sits at 0/10 simply because no user votes have been recorded. That absence of hard numbers puts the emphasis squarely on the trailer itself, which is doing the work of signaling to audiences that this is not the "Christmas Carol" they grew up with.
The release date places "Ebenezer" in an unusual slot. Mid-November is early enough to build word of mouth before the crowded Thanksgiving and December windows, but late enough that the film will not be competing directly with summer tentpoles. If it connects, it could own the pre-holiday frame for weeks. If it does not, it risks being buried by the very seasonal programming it is meant to complement.
There is also the question of tone. Dickens' novella has been adapted countless times, and each version succeeds or fails on how it handles the turn from cruelty to grace. West has shown a fascination with characters trapped by their own choices, which makes him an intriguing match for Scrooge's midnight journey. The trailer hints at sequences involving the Spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come that look to be staged as confrontations rather than guided tours, with the miser forced to fight for a second chance at happiness rather than simply being shown the error of his ways.
What the campaign has not yet revealed is how much comedy survives in the final cut. The studio lists the genre as fantasy-comedy, and Grint's presence suggests at least some warmth and humor amid the gloom. But the dominant impression from the trailer is of a filmmaker refusing to soften a story about a man who has spent decades choosing isolation over love.
With just over a month until release, Paramount will spend the coming weeks calibrating that message. Expect more footage, likely focusing on the Cratchit household and the film's emotional stakes, to balance the darkness the first trailer has so deliberately sold. For now, "Ebenezer" stands as one of the season's more unconventional bets: a Christmas story from a director known for nightmares, headlined by a star whose own public story has been anything but simple.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
