The Johnny Depp image rehabilitation campaign is in full swing. The actor, who will star Ebenezer this Thanksgiving, made his biggest public appearance since his prolonged legal battle with ex-wife Amber Heard at Comic-Con last month. (Though there was a different result in the U.S. trial, a U.K. judge did rule in 2020 that Heard’s statement that Depp was a “wife beater” was “substantially true.”) The trailer for the movie focused more on Depp’s previous filmography than the new movie itself, ending with the statement “It’s good to be back.” So far, test audiences seem to agree.
This is per a new report in Puck, which basically says that test audiences for Ebenezer just don’t seem to care about the fact that Depp, for example, once expressed a desire to drown and burn his ex-wife and “fuck her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she’s dead.” Though the movie itself scored a pretty decent 80 out of 100, it was Depp who far surpassed the norms, scoring an 86 against the typical 67 for a lead character. Women over 35 were the demographic most receptive to Depp’s character, giving him a 90 rating.
Of course, this is just a small fraction of the people who will eventually have the opportunity to see the movie, but Depp’s marketability is obviously front of mind for many in the industry. Jerry Bruckheimer is already openly talking about getting Depp back in the dreads for a sixth Pirates Of The Caribbean movie, and longtime collaborator Tim Burton signaled a willingness to work with the actor again back in 2024. Ebenezer is poised to be the first test of whether audiences are willing to go there with him, and while it’s still very early, the answer is trending toward yes.