The extraordinary comeback of ‘cash cow’ Johnny Depp
The extraordinary comeback of ‘cash cow’ Johnny Depp
Tim RobeyTue, August 18, 2026 at 12:17 PM UTC
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One of the most astonishing rehabilitations in Hollywood history would appear to be in motion.
Back in 2018, amid the quagmire of his epic legal battles against ex-wife Amber Heard and accusations of some fairly putrid behaviour, Johnny Depp was effectively dropped by Disney. His public image had become too much of a problem, the last Pirates of the Caribbean film had suffered at the box office, and they said they were developing a reboot without him – aiming to install Margot Robbie as the new, squeaky-clean headline star.Progress was slow on that, and the plates have had time to shift around. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer has now had second thoughts. Depp, it now seems, is inches away from getting back on top: he’s in talks to return as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates 6. Out of date is the verdict of an unnamed studio head to The Hollywood Reporter in 2020, that Depp was too “radioactive” to work with. We were equally sceptical about this comeback being possible. We were wrong.
Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow became one of cinema’s most recognisable characters - Peter Mountain/AP Photo/Disney
Disney’s cancellation was the start of Depp’s pariah phase. This was coeval with the fallout from a celebrity divorce as toxic and physically violent as they come. Warner Bros ditched him too in 2020, when they asked Depp to resign as the villain Grindelwald in the Fantastic Beasts films, and replaced him with Mads Mikkelsen – a decision made two days after Depp lost his libel suit against the Sun, which had called him a “wife-beater”. There was Heard’s #MeToo-themed op-ed in the Washington Post, Depp’s $50m (£36m) defamation suit against her, Heard’s $100m (£73m) countersuit, damages, appeals and settlements on both sides, with an eventual payment of $1m (£739,226) from Heard to Depp, which he donated to charity. It never seemed to end.
Depp has come up for air. He’s had biggish roles in a handful of independent films, which almost no one has seen, and directed one too (a 2024 biopic of Modigliani calledModì). Dior, which signed Depp in 2015 as the face of their (unfortunately named) “Sauvage” line, kept faith with him throughout the saga, and renegotiated his contract in 2023 for three years, to the tune of upwards of $20m (£14m) – the most lucrative men’s fragrance deal in history.
This has just about kept the wolf from the door. That said, Depp’s net worth is a long, long way from its peak more than a decade ago – perhaps as whopping a peak as $900m (£665m), according to some sources, or conservatively at least $650m (£480m).
In 2012, he was listed as the world’s highest-paid actor, often earning $75m (£55m) or $85m (£62m) a year. At the same time, his personal spending was staggeringly lavish. He was maintaining 14 homes, including an entire Provençal village and an island in the Bahamas. A fleet of 42 cars, motorbikes and boats, a $14.3m (£10m) yacht, all the paintings and vintage guitars: those added up. So does splurging $3m (£2m) on having Hunter S Thompson’s ashes fired from a cannon atop a giant, custom-made, 153ft fibreglass tower in the shape of his trademark “Gonzo fist”, which Depp naturally did.
Depp as Tonto in The Lone Ranger, the $215m Disney blockbuster that became a box-office flop in 2013 - Peter Mountain
Not just the legal fees but the withdrawal of any blockbuster salaries in the last decade – along with alleged fraud by his former business partners – have seen that nest egg shrink dramatically. He’s having to make do now with around $150m (£110m). Tiny violins, please. To make ends meet, he has sold off five penthouses in Los Angeles and his Kentucky horse farm. The yacht is long gone. Selling his own paintings, for $3.6m (£2.6m), has helped.
Depp has been doing little but balancing the books and testing the industry’s goodwill with the odd toe in the water since he saw the back of Amber Heard in court. He’s mostly been far from Hollywood, relaxing in the 850-acre estate he owns in Somerset, or another mansion he leases in East Sussex.
But now we have what we might call the reDepption kicking in. He has two major films due out in the next eight months. The first is Ebenezer, a darkly Gothic take on A Christmas Carol, which Paramount is releasing in time for Thanksgiving in November. A trailer is upon us. “It’s good to be back!” Depp rasps in jowly make-up as Scrooge – not a line anyone remembers from Dickens, but a bespoke one for reDepption purposes. We catch him blowing a raspberry and giving a panto spin to the word “Humbug!”. He’s just recognisable enough for us to realise it’s Depp, up to mischief like the good old days, but sufficiently Scrooge-ified that it’s the character, rather than Depp, to whom the ravages of Father Time (and all those angry years) can be chalked up.
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From the trailer alone, with its frisky organ music, you’d think this was a bumptious seasonal comedy with Tim Burton set-dressing – and yet Ti West, the director (X, Pearl, MaXXXine), is best known for stylised, gory horror. It’s honestly hard to know how far the film itself will lean into darkness or just be moderately eerie. Merely billing Depp as “The Master of Misfits” – and listing his iconic characters, from Pirates to Edward Scissorhands and Alice in Wonderland – is letting the real-world Depp off a little lightly. And yet no tale is calculated to redeem a character – and now an actor – more systematically than this one. It’s a wonder Depp himself hasn’t stumped up the relatively cautious $38m (£28m) budget. In July he even made a surprise appearance at San Diego Comic-Con, in full Scrooge get-up, garbling ad-libbed nonsense with naughty smirks – and they lapped it up.
Does the very existence of Ebenezer mean the industry is back to being comfortable with Depp again? Maybe not quite yet. According to casting director Glenn Gaunt, “I see it more as the industry deciding that his star power remains commercially valuable… and rather than distancing themselves from the more… complicated parts of his public persona, they’re actually leaning into the thing that makes him distinctive. And putting it to the audience to decide if they’ll turn out to support him.”
“He’s such a cash cow for Hollywood,” adds another London-based casting director who preferred not to be named. “And it’s a machine. They really don’t mind what you’ve done or who you’ve done it to, if you make money.” The perceived “dislike” of Heard lets Depp off the hook more easily than most.
For rebrand purposes, it also helps that Depp’s aesthetic tastes have run towards the dark yarns of Burton (Sleepy Hollow, Sweeney Todd), and grimly violent thrillers (From Hell, Black Mass). Clever as it may be to foreground his infamy now, it doesn’t need much of a twist – he could easily have played Scrooge long ago. Contrast, say, Armie Hammer, whose public image was so corn-fed and hearty that, per my off-the-record source, “the leap from ‘all-American guy’ to ‘cannibal’ was just too much of a transformation”. Hammer has firmly denied doing anything except sending a few kinky text messages, but his comeback is nonetheless a much harder one to square.
Playing Sweeney Todd in Tim Burton’s 2007 musical thriller, earning an Oscar nomination for the role - Album / Alamy Stock Photo
There’s no doubt all eyes will be trained on how well Ebenezer does: reviews are bound to be a feeding frenzy, and Depp may or may not win over critics, but it’ll be the money that talks. It’s an outwardly promising sign that quite an array of acting talent is seemingly having no problem co-starring in a Depp comeback vehicle. Ebenezer boasts Andrea Riseborough as the Ghost of Christmas Past – the spookiest thing in the trailer, chalk-white from head to toe – alongside Rupert Grint, Ian McKellen, Daisy Ridley, Sam Claflin and Ellie Bamber.
In Depp’s other forthcoming film, Marc Webb’s action thriller Day Drinker, he’ll be joined by Penélope Cruz. That was easy: these two are long-time friends and co-stars, dating back to their Blow (2001) days, via the fourth Pirates film, and Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express. Cruz and her husband, Javier Bardem, were among Depp’s most loyal celebrity supporters through the wilderness years. However, filling Day Drinker’s other female role brought controversy. Rumours blew up in 2024 that Sydney Sweeney was cast, which caused many of her fans to have a meltdown on social media, until she denied involvement, leaving the role to be filled by Glass Onion’s Madelyn Cline.
Depp stars in Marc Webb’s forthcoming action thriller Day Drinker - Lionsgate
This speaks to how vehemently loathed Depp is online, but he’s just as vehemently loved, by competing factions who spend seemingly their entire lives brickbatting each other in comment threads. When rising star Inde Navarrette – hugely acclaimed in this year’s horror hit Obsession – so much as clicked “like” on Ebenezer’s Instagram trailer, online forums spotted this instantly, calling her “gross” and “trashy”.
This makes the equation for Disney still quite uneasy, at least until those Ebenezer grosses take a load off. Perhaps it’s uneasier still for Margot Robbie. Supposedly, she’s still wanted for the leading role in the next Pirates, with Depp to return in some kind of supporting capacity. Depp’s days of being a rakish, rum-swilling antihero must be behind him – and will need to stay that way if Disney doesn’t want to derail this delicate rebrand from the off.
Expect Captain Jack – who has already been dragged once to Davy Jones’ locker – to come back spectral, a little rotten, or full of holes. It’s bound to happen, because it’s simply how the industry launders its comebacks these days: not by whitewashing but leaning in.
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
