Johnny Depp's Ebenezer Leads the Box Office on Friday
Johnny Depp's Ebenezer, a new adaptation of A Christmas Carol, led Friday with $6.7 million, Variety and Deadline reported, and may open near $20 million.
The facts come first below. My opinion follows in the section marked as opinion.
Johnny Depp's "Ebenezer," a PG-13 adaptation of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," led the box office on Friday with $6.7 million, Variety reported. A Saturday morning Deadline update described the same $6.7 million figure as Friday's gross including previews. The film, directed by Ti West, follows the miserly businessman visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future. It is playing in 3,535 North American theaters, Variety and Deadline said.
Variety projected an opening weekend of $18 million to $20 million domestically, plus about $20 million overseas, for a global start around $38 million to $40 million. That would be a solid beginning, Variety said, because Paramount spent a modest $38 million to produce the film. Deadline, in its Saturday morning update, said the studio was still looking at a U.S. opening of $20 million or more, though rivals saw the weekend coming in lower. Audiences gave "Ebenezer" an "A-" grade on CinemaScore exit polls, both trades reported. Deadline said the film is playing evenly across the country, not only on the coasts, and that women over 25 were the largest single demographic group.
The movie is Depp's first major studio film in eight years, since 2018's "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald," Variety reported. Warner Bros. fired him from that "Harry Potter" spinoff series in 2020 after he lost a libel case against the British tabloid The Sun. Depp later won a U.S. defamation trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard, who had accused him of domestic abuse, Variety said. In the years that followed he appeared in smaller films and directed a 2024 biopic, while Hollywood kept its distance.
Friday's other new wide releases trailed. Sony's "Ghost Soldier," starring Jim Caviezel as a former Special Forces soldier, grossed $1.5 million from 2,558 locations, Variety said, and is expected to take in about $4.9 million over the traditional weekend. Amazon MGM's heist comedy "How to Rob a Bank," starring Nicholas Hoult, Zoe Kravitz, and Pete Davidson, took in $2.2 million from 2,810 theaters and is pacing toward an opening of about $4.75 million, a weak start against a production cost of more than $40 million, Variety reported. That film received a "B-" CinemaScore. Deadline likewise put Friday and previews for the heist picture at $2.2 million. Hollywood franchise news also moved this week after Steve Miner was named to direct a new Friday the 13th film planned for 2027.
Holdovers filled out the rest of the chart. Variety said "The Cat in the Hat" took in $2.2 million on Friday and is headed for about $10 million through Sunday, while "Godzilla Minus Zero" had $2.1 million on Friday and is expected to collect about $7.5 million in its second weekend. Deadline, writing Saturday morning, said the overall weekend was looking low, around $80 million for all movies, though that would still be up 8 percent from a year ago.
Opinion:
Dickens wrote a story about a hard heart, a coming judgment, repentance, and mercy. That story still puts people in theater seats in mid-November. An opening-day lead is not a coronation, and a ticket sale is not a moral verdict on a famous actor's life. The numbers through Sunday will tell more than Friday alone, and Variety's own forecast already allows that the weekend may come in under $20 million.
Redemption is real. It is also not a marketing slogan. In the book, the ghosts come to convict a man of his sin, not to excuse it. If audiences sit through that old plot, they will hear something this business often forgets: a man can change, but only if he tells the truth about what he has been, and only if he turns. The board of a studio cannot grant that. Neither can a strong CinemaScore.
