It’s the ghost from Hollywood’s Christmas past as Johnny Depp has returned in his biggest movie project yet since being ostracised during a contentious and ugly defamation lawsuit with ex-wife Amber Heard.

Paramount Pictures, under the new leadership of David Ellison, is in final negotiations to pick up a new take on Charles Dickens’ oft-adapted A Christmas Carol.

Ti West, the horror filmmaker behind the X, Pearl and MaXXXine movies, is attached to direct the feature, which is titled Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol. Paramount is ready to set a Nov. 13, 2026, release date.

Andrea Riseborough is also attached to star in the project that has a script by Nathaniel Halpern. Emma Watts, who briefly ran Paramount’s film division, is producing.

The studio is describing the new movie project as “a thrilling ghost story set in Dickens’ London, following one man’s supernatural journey to face his past, present and future and fight for a second chance.”

With Depp playing Ebenezer Scrooge, that seems like an apt description for the career trajectory of Depp, once one of the biggest and most bankable stars in 21st-century Hollywood, thanks to movies such as The Pirates of the Caribbean series, Alice in Wonderland, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

But multi-year defamation suits on both sides of the Atlantic from his split from ex-wife Amber Heard resulted in a string of headlines that Hollywood found unappetizing, and Depp found himself on the outs with studios.

He was fired from Warner Bros.’s Fantastic Beasts franchise in 2020. Depp shifted his attention to non-US movies and appeared in a period piece, Jeanne du Barry.

At the movie’s premiere at Cannes in 2023, he was asked about Hollywood’s view of him, to which he replied, “I don’t feel boycotted, because I don’t think about Hollywood. I don’t feel much further need for Hollywood — I don’t know about you.”

His next move was a Hollywood half-step, starring in Day Drinker, a thriller made by Lionsgate, which launched the project as an international sales on the title this week at the American Film Market.

The movie was shot earlier this year and is expected to be released in 2026.

The Depp-West package hit the Hollywood market in the summer, ahead of Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount. Paramount, even then, was weighing it.

But deal-making was paused when Skydance took over and began evaluating the vast array of film projects that were coming in or close to being greenlit.

In the end, the Depp-West pairing was deemed too hot not to pick up.