Johnny Depp's 'Ebenezer' Trailer Hides a Nod to His First Film Role in 'A Nightmare on Elm Street'

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2026 — Johnny Depp is back in Hollywood, and the second trailer for Ebenezer gives fans a closer look at his take on Ebenezer Scrooge — in a dark new version of A Christmas Carol from director Ti West, the filmmaker behind the X trilogy. But there is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment in the new trailer that takes Depp all the way back to his first movie role.

Near the end of the trailer, Scrooge is pulled down into his own bed. For Depp fans, it is instant déjà vu. Depp's first major film role was as Glen Lantz in Wes Craven's 1984 horror classic A Nightmare on Elm Street, where Glen meets one of the movie's most memorable fates when Freddy Krueger pulls him through his mattress, sending him spinning into a bloody hole in the bed. In Ebenezer, Scrooge's trip through the mattress is considerably less gruesome — but the visual is hard to miss if you're familiar with Depp's first movie, per Men's Journal.

The connection lands even harder because A Nightmare on Elm Street is not just an early Depp credit. It sits at No. 1 on Rotten Tomatoes' editorial ranking of Johnny Depp's best movies — ahead of Edward Scissorhands, What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Donnie Brasco and Ed Wood — with the ranking specifically highlighting Glen Lantz as Depp's first big break. The 1984 horror classic also holds a 93% Tomatometer score, making it one of the most highly regarded entries in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. Whether West planted the mattress moment deliberately or it emerged as a happy accident of the ghost-story grammar, it functions as a quiet career bookend: the actor pulled through a bed in 1984, and the star pulled through a bed again forty-two years later.

Eight years out, one Scrooge back in

Ebenezer arrives after a long stretch in which Depp largely stepped away from Hollywood studio movies. His most recent film was the 2023 French-language period drama Jeanne du Barry, in which he played King Louis XV and which opened the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. Before that came Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald in 2018 — Depp's last Hollywood studio film, making Ebenezer his first in eight years, per PEOPLE.

The project has been building momentum all summer. Word of Depp's casting broke last October, and in July he surprised fans by appearing at San Diego Comic-Con in full Scrooge costume — first with a surprise street performance, then introducing the first trailer at a Hall H panel, alongside a pop-up activation recreating Scrooge's counting-house office. A source told PEOPLE the project "felt like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" for Depp: "He's back in a character role, which he loves. He really comes to life when he's in those characters — they're in his DNA."

Depp's transformation in the footage is total: heavy facial prosthetics, weathered makeup, salt-and-pepper hair and long gray locks that render him nearly unrecognizable. The tagline says it plainly: "The name you know, the story you don't."

A ghost story with teeth

Ti West is an inspired match for the material. The director of X, Pearl and MaXXXine built his reputation on stylish, slow-burn dread, and the new trailer leans fully into the darker elements of Dickens' 1843 novella — 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. The footage highlights genuine horror imagery: terrifying spectral apparitions, the three spirits staged like real horror-movie entities, and a harrowing sequence depicting Scrooge buried alive.

The screenplay comes from Nathaniel Halpern, with Emma Watts producing, per TheWrap. The ensemble is one of the strongest of the fall season: Ian McKellen appears as the ghost of Jacob Marley, warning Scrooge of the three spirits to come; Rupert Grint plays Bob Cratchit; and the cast is rounded out by Andrea Riseborough, Sam Claflin, Daisy Ridley, Tramell Tillman, Arthur Conti, Ellie Bamber, Henry Lloyd-Hughes and Charlie Murphy.

Paramount has set the film for a November 13 theatrical release — squarely kicking off the holiday movie season with a Christmas story that is anything but cozy. And Depp's comeback appears to be just getting started: Hypebeast reports he will follow Ebenezer with Lionsgate's Day Drinker in March 2027. Between the Comic-Con reception and a trailer leaning into full-throated horror, the bet is that audiences are ready to welcome him back — mattress and all.

Our horror desk is tracking the full spooky-season slate, and the movies section has more on this fall's theatrical calendar — including Tom Cruise's next big swing.

One Scrooge among many

Depp is stepping into one of the most played roles in film history. Dickens' miser has been adapted for the screen countless times, with the notable film versions including Scrooge (1951) starring Alastair Sim, Scrooge (1970) starring Albert Finney, A Christmas Carol (1984) starring George C. Scott, Scrooged (1988) starring Bill Murray, The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) starring Michael Caine, and Robert Zemeckis's motion-capture A Christmas Carol (2009) starring Jim Carrey, per Bloody Disgusting. West's version is the first to arrive as a full-blooded horror film from a director whose last three features built a modern slasher mythology.

It is also a meaningful showcase for a performer with three Academy Award nominations for Best Actor — for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2004), Finding Neverland (2005) and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2008), per TheWrap — taking on his most physically transformative role in years. After the Comic-Con reception and a trailer that treats the spirits as genuine horror entities rather than holiday window dressing, the November 13 release will test whether a Christmas story can anchor the fall horror calendar. If the mattress moment is any indication, West is betting the film's scares and its star's history are cut from the same cloth.