Johnny Depp’s comeback just went from narrative to numbers.
Puck’s Matthew Belloni reveals in Thursday’s What I’m Hearing newsletter that Paramount tested Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol earlier this month, and the scores confirm what Hollywood has spent eight years refusing to believe.
Audiences want Johnny Depp back.
The Ebenezer Test Screening Numbers
Per Belloni, Paramount studio heads Josh Greenstein and Dana Goldberg traveled to Paramus, New Jersey on August 11 for a test screening of the Ti West film.
The first cut scored an 80, meaning four out of five audience members rated it excellent or very good.
Belloni notes the historical norm for test screenings is a 72, with only the top ten percent of movies hitting 93 or better.
Solid for an all-audience holiday title. But the number the town actually cares about is Depp’s.
The actor scored an 86.
The general norm for a lead is a 67, per Belloni, making that remarkably high for any star, let alone one the industry treated as unemployable a few years ago.
And here is the stat that ends the argument: women over 35 rated the movie most favorably of any demo, with Depp’s scores among them hitting 90 percent.
Paramount and a rep for Depp declined to comment, but Belloni says he confirmed the numbers with three sources.
The Audience Never Canceled Johnny Depp
The women-over-35 number matters because that was the whole case against him.
The conventional wisdom said that demo would be the one most put off by the headlines from the Amber Heard trial.
Instead, it turned out to be his strongest audience.
Warner Bros. cut Depp from Fantastic Beasts. Disney dropped him from Pirates of the Caribbean. The audience never signed off on any of it.
Belloni’s data backs that up, as he reports Depp’s Q score has climbed to 27, up from 24 in 2023, and that Paramount’s own internal research showed the same marketability, which is why the studio is leaning in.
The first trailer even has Depp looking straight into the camera and saying, “It’s good to be back.”
That follows the Comic-Con stunt last month, where Depp took over San Diego in full Scrooge costume with no panel, no footage, and no Q&A, and it played exactly the way Paramount hoped.
Every Studio In Hollywood Is Watching
Belloni writes that a Depp comeback is “shaping up as a major narrative for the fall,” with producers and executives across town monitoring the results.
Ebenezer cost $40 million, so Paramount’s risk is small. The upside is not.
Belloni compares it to Lionsgate making the Michael Jackson movie the majors deemed too radioactive, then riding it toward $1 billion.
David Ellison’s Paramount is the first major to fully embrace Depp since his firing, and if Ebenezer works, it brings back something Hollywood has been starving for: an actual movie star.
Lionsgate is watching closest, as Belloni reports Depp’s action thriller Day Drinker is now scheduled for March 2027.
Disney Wants Depp For Pirates 6
Here is where it connects to the weekend’s news.
Per Belloni, Disney film chiefs Alan Bergman and David Greenbaum want to greenlight another Pirates of the Caribbean with Depp if they can get him, and the Ebenezer scores are good news for that effort.
Margot Robbie has been attached to lead the movie since 2020, but Belloni reports three or four script iterations have failed to convince her to commit.
1917 writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns is now working on a version that keeps Robbie front and center while leaving room for Depp’s Jack Sparrow as a supporting character.
That matches Deadline’s reporting out of D23, which described Pirates 6 as a Margot Robbie movie with Jack Sparrow sidelined, a plan fans rejected on sight.
The Ebenezer scores make that plan look even more backwards.
Disney is trying to fit the most audience-tested star in Hollywood into a side role in the franchise he built, while the lead it picked still has not said yes after four scripts.
As we said when the Deadline report dropped, Disney needs Depp far more than Depp needs Disney. Now there is data.
Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol opens only in theaters on November 13.
