Ebenezer Puts Johnny Depp in Ti West's Hands, and the Full Trailer Is Grimmer Than I Expected

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Paramount put out the full trailer for Ebenezer this week and it is not the cosy version of A Christmas Carol. Ti West, who made the X trilogy, directs, and the trailer leans on candlelight, snow that looks like ash and a Scrooge who seems genuinely dangerous rather than just mean. Johnny Depp plays him, and it is his first major American studio film in about eight years.

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The cast around him is stacked in a way that Christmas films usually are not. Ian McKellen is Jacob Marley, Andrea Riseborough is the Ghost of Christmas Past, Tramell Tillman from Severance is Christmas Present, Rupert Grint is Bob Cratchit and Sam Claflin is Fred. Daisy Ridley is in it too, though the reports cannot agree on whether she is the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come or Emily Cratchit, which suggests the film has a surprise in it.

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The question with Depp is whether people will show up. Ebenezer is the test case. It is a PG-13 film opening November 13, a week before Sunrise on the Reaping, and Paramount has positioned it as a prestige Christmas release rather than a horror film, despite the director. Nathaniel Halpern, who wrote Tales from the Loop, did the script and Emma Watts produced.

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On the evidence of the trailer, Depp is doing something closer to his Sweeney Todd register than anything since. He is thin, he is quiet, and when he snaps it is unsettling. McKellen in chains is exactly what you want. If West can resist the urge to make it an outright horror film and keep it as a ghost story with teeth, this could be the version of Dickens that sticks for a generation.

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I was sceptical when it was announced and the trailer has turned me. Will you see it in a cinema, or is Scrooge a film you only watch at home with the heating on?