New York [US], November 13: The long-time A-lister is appearing as Scrooge in new A Christmas Carol adaptation Ebenezer. It's his first studio film since his court battles with ex-wife Amber Heard - and all eyes will be on how it fares at the box office.
Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol is the definitive story of redemption and rehabilitation - of a man with a murky reputation surprising the world with his goodness. So what are we to make of the latest big-screen version of the story, Ebenezer, having Johnny Depp in the starring role?
The casting certainly adds a postmodern layer to the film. In November 2020, Depp lost a libel case in England against the UK's Sun newspaper, after it had labelled him a "wife beater" in relation to his actress ex-wife Amber Heard.
The judge ruled that the Sun had proved the article's contents to be "substantially true" - and Warner Bros immediately dropped Depp from JK Rowling's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them franchise.
Soon, the couple's marriage was the subject of another court battle. In 2022, Depp sued Heard for libel in the US for implying in a Washington Post opinion article that he was a domestic abuser.
This time the jury found in his favour and agreed that Heard had defamed him.
But the highly publicised six-week trial featured details of their volatile relationship and drug use, including Depp and Heard's former marriage counsellor Dr Laurel Anderson testifying that the couple engaged in "what I saw as mutual abuse". It looked as if Depp's career was, in Dickens's phrase, as dead as a doornail.
Source: Fijian Broadcasting Corporation
