Johnny Depp Earned His First Box Office Win In 8 Years, But Does That Mean He’s Back?

For the first time in eight years, Johnny Depp is back on top of the box office. Ebenezer is set to easily earn the most in theater grosses this weekend, and in doing so, it leads us all to a pretty obvious question. Is Johnny Depp back?

The Pirates Of The Caribbean lead was arguably the biggest movie star in the entire world for an extended period of time in the 2000s and 2010s before the fallout from his relationship with Amber Heard devolved into lawsuits, abuse allegations and tabloid headlines. Apart from the occasional artsy project here or there, he’s basically disappeared from theaters since Covid, but now, thanks to Ebenezer, he’s reminding everyone in Hollywood that he’s one of the most bankable stars on the planet.

You can take a look at the box office chart below, which has strong estimates thanks to some fine work over at The Numbers…

So, does this mean Johnny Depp is back? Well, the short answer is probably sort of, as some are predicting. The long answer is a little more complicated. Hollywood studios care about success more than any other metric, and there’s a lot of success here for Depp. Ebenezer was reportedly made for less than forty million dollars, and while critic reviews are middling, fan response has been terrific with an A- CinemaScore. The Hollywood Reporter claims half of the people who saw the movie this weekend cited Deep and his make-up heavy role as the primary reason they went, and Deadline further claims that the movie is putting people in seats across the entire country, not just in certain theaters that cater to certain demographics.

Add the positive word of mouth to the fact that it’s a holiday movie, and there’s every reason to believe Ebenezer will have a nice little extended run here in theaters. In short, it’s going to remind all of the executives and producers working in show business that Depp, despite his extended absence, is still one of the most bankable stars in all of Hollywood, even if we haven’t seen it since he was starring in the Fantastic Beasts franchise. He’s almost certainly going to get a few projects with elevated budgets coming out of this.

We already know one of those is for sure coming. Amazing Spider-Man director Marc Webb cast Depp in his next movie opposite Penelope Cruz called Day Drinker. That’s scheduled to hit theaters in March of 2027. I think it would be a surprise not to see him pick up commitments for a few more movies in the wake of this success too. I don’t think quite Marvel-style $250M event films, but I think they’ll be the type of projects that will get wide releases and have high upside. We’ll see though.

Outside of Depp, it was a pretty sleepy weekend at the box office. The Cat In The Hat held onto second place for its second consecutive weekend. It should continue doing solid business for at least a few more weeks as a great option for families. Godzilla Minus One fell quite a bit more, but that’s not a surprise for a foreign language film with a passionate target audience. The people who wanted to see that movie were always going to come out its first weekend, which is why it put up such a huge number en route to victory last weekend.

The story wasn’t quite as promising for some of the other new entries beyond Ebenezer. Ghost Soldier and How To Rob A Bank both struggled to find a wide audience and were barely able to top five million dollars. It’s unlikely either will be able to build off those disappointing numbers, but we’ll have to wait and see for next weekend when the latest edition of The Hunger Games looks poised to absolutely dominate in what could be a hundred million dollar money cannon.