An unnamed studio head told the Hollywood Reporter in 2020 that Depp was too \u201cradioactive\u201d to work with. That verdict now looks out of date, as we were equally sceptical about this comeback being possible. We were wrong.<\/p>\n
Disney\u2019s cancellation was the start of Depp\u2019s pariah phase. This was coeval with the fallout from a celebrity divorce as toxic and physically violent as they come. <\/p>\n
Warner Bros ditched him too in 2020, when they asked Depp to resign as the villain Grindelwald in the Fantastic Beasts films, and replaced him with Mads Mikkelsen \u2013 a decision made two days after Depp lost his libel suit against the Sun, which had called him a \u201cwife-beater\u201d. <\/p>\n
There was Heard\u2019s #MeToo-themed op-ed in the Washington Post, Depp\u2019s US$50 million ($85m) defamation suit against her, Heard\u2019s US$100m countersuit, damages, appeals and settlements on both sides, with an eventual payment of US$1m from Heard to Depp, which he donated to charity. It never seemed to end.<\/p>\n
Depp has come up for air. He\u2019s had biggish roles in a handful of independent films, which almost no one has seen, and directed one too (a 2024 biopic of Modigliani called Modi). <\/p>\n
Dior, which signed Depp in 2015 as the face of their (unfortunately named) \u201cSauvage\u201d line, kept faith with him throughout the saga, and renegotiated his contract in 2023 for three years, to the tune of upwards of US$20m \u2013 the most lucrative men\u2019s fragrance deal in history.<\/p>\n
This has just about kept the wolf from the door. That said, Depp\u2019s net worth is a long, long way from its peak more than a decade ago \u2013 perhaps as whopping a peak as US$900m, according to some sources, or conservatively at least US$650m.<\/p>\n
In 2012, he was listed as the world\u2019s highest-paid actor, often earning US$75m or US$85m a year. <\/p>\n
At the same time, his personal spending was staggeringly lavish. He was maintaining 14 homes, including an entire Provencal village and an island in the Bahamas. <\/p>\n
A fleet of 42 cars, motorbikes and boats, a US$14.3m yacht, all the paintings and vintage guitars: those added up. <\/p>\n
So does splurging US$3m on having Hunter S Thompson\u2019s ashes fired from a cannon atop a giant, custom-made, 46m fibreglass tower in the shape of his trademark \u201cGonzo fist\u201d, which Depp naturally did.<\/p>\n
Not just the legal fees but the withdrawal of any blockbuster salaries in the last decade \u2013 with alleged fraud by his former business partners \u2013 have seen that nest egg shrink dramatically. He\u2019s having to make do now with around US$150m. Tiny violins, please. <\/p>\n
To make ends meet, he has sold off five penthouses in Los Angeles and his Kentucky horse farm. The yacht is long gone. Selling his own paintings, for US$3.6m, has helped.<\/p>\n
Depp has been doing little but balancing the books and testing the industry\u2019s goodwill with the odd toe in the water since he saw the back of Heard in court. He\u2019s mostly been far from Hollywood, relaxing in the 343ha estate he owns in Somerset, or another mansion he leases in East Sussex.<\/p>\n
But now we have what we might call the reDepption kicking in. He has two major films due out in the next eight months. <\/p>\n
The first is Ebenezer, a darkly Gothic take on A Christmas Carol, which Paramount is releasing in time for Thanksgiving in November. A trailer is upon us. \u201cIt\u2019s good to be back!\u201d Depp rasps in jowly make-up as Scrooge \u2013 not a line anyone remembers from Dickens, but a bespoke one for reDepption purposes. <\/p>\n
We catch him blowing a raspberry and giving a panto spin to the word \u201cHumbug!\u201d. He\u2019s just recognisable enough for us to realise it\u2019s Depp, up to mischief like the good old days, but sufficiently Scrooge-ified that it\u2019s the character, rather than Depp, to whom the ravages of Father Time (and all those angry years) can be chalked up.<\/p>\n
From the trailer alone, with its frisky organ music, you\u2019d think this was a bumptious seasonal comedy with Tim Burton set-dressing \u2013 and yet Ti West, the director (X, Pearl, MaXXXine), is best known for stylised, gory horror. It\u2019s honestly hard to know how far the film itself will lean into darkness or just be moderately eerie. <\/p>\n
Merely billing Depp as \u201cThe Master of Misfits\u201d \u2013 and listing his iconic characters, from Pirates to Edward Scissorhands and Alice in Wonderland \u2013 is letting the real-world Depp off a little lightly. And yet no tale is calculated to redeem a character \u2013 and now an actor \u2013 more systematically than this one. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s a wonder Depp himself hasn\u2019t stumped up the relatively cautious US$38m budget. In July he even made a surprise appearance at San Diego Comic-Con, in full Scrooge get-up, garbling ad-libbed nonsense with naughty smirks \u2013 and they lapped it up.<\/p>\n
Does the very existence of Ebenezer mean the industry is back to being comfortable with Depp again? Maybe not quite yet. <\/p>\n
According to casting director Glenn Gaunt, \u201cI see it more as the industry deciding that his star power remains commercially valuable \u2026 and rather than distancing themselves from the more \u2026 complicated parts of his public persona, they\u2019re actually leaning into the thing that makes him distinctive. And putting it to the audience to decide if they\u2019ll turn out to support him.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s such a cash cow for Hollywood,\u201d adds another London-based casting director who preferred not to be named. \u201cAnd it\u2019s a machine. They really don\u2019t mind what you\u2019ve done or who you\u2019ve done it to, if you make money.\u201d <\/p>\n
The perceived \u201cdislike\u201d of Heard lets Depp off the hook more easily than most.<\/p>\n
For rebrand purposes, it also helps that Depp\u2019s aesthetic tastes have run towards the dark yarns of Burton (Sleepy Hollow, Sweeney Todd), and grimly violent thrillers (From Hell, Black Mass). <\/p>\n
Clever as it may be to foreground his infamy now, it doesn\u2019t need much of a twist \u2013 he could easily have played Scrooge long ago. <\/p>\n
Contrast, say, Armie Hammer, whose public image was so corn-fed and hearty that, per my off-the-record source, \u201cthe leap from \u2018all-American guy\u2019 to \u2018cannibal\u2019 was just too much of a transformation\u201d. <\/p>\n
Hammer has firmly denied doing anything except sending a few kinky text messages, but his comeback is nonetheless a much harder one to square.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no doubt all eyes will be trained on how well Ebenezer does: reviews are bound to be a feeding frenzy, and Depp may or may not win over critics, but it\u2019ll be the money that talks. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s an outwardly promising sign that quite an array of acting talent is seemingly having no problem co-starring in a Depp comeback vehicle. Ebenezer boasts Andrea Riseborough as the Ghost of Christmas Past \u2013 the spookiest thing in the trailer, chalk-white from head to toe \u2013 alongside Rupert Grint, Ian McKellen, Daisy Ridley, Sam Claflin and Ellie Bamber.<\/p>\n
In Depp\u2019s other forthcoming film, Marc Webb\u2019s action thriller Day Drinker, he\u2019ll be joined by Penelope Cruz. <\/p>\n
That was easy: these two are long-time friends and co-stars, dating back to their Blow (2001) days, via the fourth Pirates film, and Kenneth Branagh\u2019s Murder on the Orient Express. Cruz and her husband, Javier Bardem, were among Depp\u2019s most loyal celebrity supporters through the wilderness years. <\/p>\n
However, filling Day Drinker\u2019s other female role brought controversy. Rumours blew up in 2024 that Sydney Sweeney was cast, which caused many of her fans to have a meltdown on social media, until she denied involvement, leaving the role to be filled by Glass Onion\u2019s Madelyn Cline.<\/p>\n
This speaks to how vehemently loathed Depp is online, but he\u2019s just as vehemently loved, by competing factions who spend seemingly their entire lives brick-batting each other in comment threads. <\/p>\n
When rising star Inde Navarrette \u2013 hugely acclaimed in this year\u2019s horror hit Obsession \u2013 so much as clicked \u201clike\u201d on Ebenezer\u2019s Instagram trailer, online forums spotted this instantly, calling her \u201cgross\u201d and \u201ctrashy\u201d.<\/p>\n
This makes the equation for Disney still quite uneasy, at least until those Ebenezer grosses take a load off. <\/p>\n
Perhaps it\u2019s uneasier still for Robbie. Supposedly, she\u2019s still wanted for the leading role in the next Pirates, with Depp to return in some kind of supporting capacity. <\/p>\n
Depp\u2019s days of being a rakish, rum-swilling anti-hero must be behind him \u2013 and will need to stay that way if Disney doesn\u2019t want to derail this delicate rebrand from the off.<\/p>\n
Expect Captain Jack \u2013 who has already been dragged once to Davy Jones\u2019 locker \u2013 to come back spectral, a little rotten, or full of holes. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s bound to happen, because it\u2019s simply how the industry launders its comebacks these days: not by whitewashing but leaning in.<\/p>\n
Sign up to Herald Premium Editor\u2019s Picks<\/a>, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week\u2019s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An unnamed studio head told the Hollywood Reporter in 2020 that Depp was too \u201cradioactive\u201d to work with.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[12642,117724,6932,22773,5276,146343,156,39197,1861,4223,32096,3025,75287,111,139,69,1118,283345,223,6730],"class_list":["post-575059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-appear","tag-astonishing","tag-cash","tag-comeback","tag-cow","tag-depp","tag-entertainment","tag-extraordinary","tag-history","tag-hollywood","tag-johnny","tag-most","tag-motion","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-rehabilitations","tag-the","tag-would"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}