Johnny Depp’s career has moved through blockbuster heights, auteur detours and a prolonged period away from Hollywood’s biggest studio productions. After the legal battles that dominated headlines and his exit from major franchises, his return to mainstream American cinema has been a gradual process rather than a single comeback moment. Now, with multiple theatrical projects lined up, the actor is once again moving into territory that was once his home turf.

The interesting part is that the comeback is no longer just a hypothetical Hollywood talking point. Depp has two major studio movies arriving within months of each other, with another ambitious project waiting in the wings, giving this next chapter a surprisingly busy shape.

The biggest pieces of Johnny Depp’s return are Day Drinker and Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol. The latter arrives first, with Paramount releasing Ti West’s dark reimagining of Charles Dickens’ classic on November 13, 2026. Depp plays Ebenezer Scrooge, with Andrea Riseborough, Ian McKellen, Rupert Grint, Daisy Ridley and Tramell Tillman among the ensemble. That role also gives Depp a particularly theatrical transformation to work with. 

West, whose filmmaking has frequently crossed horror and psychological territory, is turning A Christmas Carol into a darker supernatural story, while Depp appears under heavy period makeup as the miserly Scrooge. Beyond that, Depp is attached to Terry Gilliam’s The Carnival at the End of Days, an apocalyptic dark comedy in which he plays Satan alongside Adam Driver, Jeff Bridges and Jason Momoa. The film has completed principal photography and is in post-production.

Day Drinker brings Depp back into a contemporary studio thriller and reunites him with Penélope Cruz for their fourth movie together after Blow, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and Murder on the Orient Express.

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The latest trailer now gives audiences a much better idea of the strange waters Depp is sailing into this time.

Lionsgate’s Day Drinker trailer opens the door to a very different kind of Johnny Depp performance. Directed by Marc Webb and written by Zach Dean, the thriller follows Madelyn Cline as a private-yacht bartender whose encounter with Depp’s mysterious guest quickly pulls her into a dangerous criminal world. Penélope Cruz plays the criminal figure at the center of that web, with the story promising connections between the three characters that are not immediately obvious.

The trailer leans hard into the film’s eerie, off-kilter atmosphere. Depp appears grey-haired and unsettling, delivering an ominous reflection about revenge, ghosts and being a “day drinker,” while the yacht setting turns what initially looks like an unusual encounter into something much more sinister. Earlier footage teased tarot cards, candles and an axe, and the full trailer expands that ominous visual language into a revenge-driven thriller with a distinctly strange Depp flavor. 

Day Drinker is scheduled to arrive exclusively in theaters on March 26, 2027, giving Depp another major theatrical release after Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol.

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