Johnny Depp plots his comeback with first studio movie since Warner Bros sacked him from Fantastic Beasts

The 2022 Oscars ceremony had a strange quirk.

In between all the tony peer-voted awards, and Will Smith slapping Chris Rock, that year, the Academy gave out some other “honours” – the winners of Twitter-voted categories “Fan Favourite” and “Cheer Moment”.

The winners didn’t get a statue or a speech – can you imagine the outrage – but the top five got a call-out during the broadcast.

Two different Zack Snyder movies (Justice League and Army of the Dead) won the categories, later leading to accusations from an analytics company that the poll had been “rigged” by automated bots, but the more curious inclusion in third place was a movie called Minamata.

Minamata was a small, independent film about W. Eugene Smith, an American photographer who documented widescale mercury poisoning in a Japanese town in 1971. The director, Andrew Levitas, had never before released a film and his profile was in the visual arts world.

If you’ve never heard of it, don’t worry, not many people have. So, how did Minamata place third in an Oscars-endorsed popularity contest?

It starred Johnny Depp.

As we saw during the Depp versus Amber Heard trial, the Depp defenders are passionate and they are vocal. They don’t only advocate for their idol, they go after anyone who disagrees, especially Heard, who was vilified online and in person.

When Minamata came third in that poll, you start to think that the fandom must also be legion, and that Depp’s commercial prospects have not diminished after years of scandal.

Minamata was a certifiable flop. Depp earnt a $US3 million salary for his performance. The filming was moved to Serbia because it cost too much to do it in Japan. The movie made $US755,878 at the box office.

There was also Jeanne du Barry, another comeback vehicle that also happened to be the opening night film of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. The French movie was directed by and starred Maiwenn, about the famed historical mistress of King Louis XV. Depp played the monarch and spoke French for the role.

Jeanne du Barry’s reported budget of $US22.4 million was funded in part by the Saudi Arabian Red Sea Film Festival Foundation. It made back $US14.8 million on the international market, predominantly in France and Russia. It had a US release but the returns were so negligible, no tracking company reported them.

In Australia, it earnt just over $200,000, and months before the local cinema release, it was already available on long-haul flights going to and from the country.

Where were all those Depp fans when it came to supporting him with what really counts for success in show business, box office receipts? Are there as many of them as it seemed or were they just very loud, or maybe bots?

Not for nothing, in the legal tussle between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, it emerged that Baldoni had hired a crisis PR company with the alleged instructions to run an online smear campaign against Lively. Depp had used the same team during his trial against Heard.

Whether Depp still has any commercial pull is about to be tested. For the first time since he was fired from Warner Bros’ Fantastic Beasts franchise, Depp has been cast in a studio movie.

He will play Ebenezer Scrooge (yes, the irony) in a new version of A Christmas Carol, to be directed by Ti West, who is best known for horror trilogy X, Pearl and MaXXXine.

Paramount, now controlled by David Ellison, son of billionaire tech mogul and friend of Donald Trump, Larry Ellison, is in final negotiations to pick up the film for a November 2026 release. It will also feature British actor and Oscar nominee Andrea Riseborough.

Is this the comeback Depp has been waiting for, to be welcomed back behind the gates of Hollywood’s famed studios, instead of living in exile in Europe?

Since Heard wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post in late 2018, alleging Depp had been abusive during their marriage, Depp’s brand has been toxic.

He sued Heard and the publicly broadcast six-week trial in 2022 turned very nasty very quickly with accusations of violence from both sides. Heard said she received hundreds of death threats daily.

Among the details that emerged included text messages he sent to actor Paul Bettany saying he wanted to kill her and burn her corpse, smashed kitchen cabinets, alleged drug binges, alleged violence, and defecation.

The jury found in favour of Depp but also found Heard proved one of her counter-claims.

He wasn’t so lucky in 2020 when a UK court sided with The Sun newspaper in a defamation lawsuit Depp brought against the publication when it called him a “wife-beater”. The court found The Sun proved 12 out of 14 instances of alleged domestic violence.

Depp had been sacked from Fantastic Beasts in the days after the UK verdict.

So, vindicated on one side of the Atlantic, condemned on the other.

A key contention of Depp’s case in the American trial was Heard’s opinion piece had cost him lucrative jobs in big movies. The $US50 million claim he made against her was for lost earnings.

It ignored a glaring truth. By the late 2010s, Depp was no longer a bankable marquee star. He had several projects bomb, including the 2013 big budget failure The Lone Ranger whose planned sequel was quickly scrapped.

Part of that is the “movie star” model had shifted and audiences increasingly chose cinema releases based on intellectual property such as Fast & Furious or Marvel, rather than the actors in them.

But he also had a reputation for being difficult to work with. He was renowned for being late to set, which costs time and money, and had to be fed his lines through a hidden earpiece. He became a professional liability.

During the Heard trial, a Disney executive, Tina Newman, testified that the studio’s decision to not go ahead with a sixth Pirates of the Caribbean had nothing to do with Heard’s article. His former agent, Tracey Jacobs, said there would be multiple complaints about Depp from every production he’s ever worked on.

Depp has been quiet but he wasn’t been gone.

He’s been feted by smaller European film festivals, and he’s become personal friends with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who, according to a US intelligence report, ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

According to Vanity Fair, Depp spent seven weeks in Saudi Arabia in 2023, palling around in royal palaces, and on yachts and private jets. The Red Sea Film Festival Foundation, which kicked in that money for Jeanne du Barry, also bankrolled Depp’s feature Modi, Three Days on the Wing of Madness, about the artist Modigliani, which he directed.

This week, he was in attendance at the Saudi Film Confex in Riyadh, delivering a “masterclass session” called The Genius of Embodying Different Roles.

It does seem like things are starting to thaw for Depp, and not just in contentious spaces like Saudi Arabia.

He also filmed scenes for an action thriller called Day Drinker, which was shot in Spain. Day Drinker is the closest thing, until A Christmas Carol, that has taken a risk in hiring Depp. It’s not going to be released by one of the bigger Hollywood studios but by a second-tier player, Lionsgate.

It also has recognisable names involved, including director Marc Webb (The Amazing Spider-Man and 500 Days of Summer), and Penelope Cruz, who has been posting photos of their reunion.

Depp also never lost his Dior brand deal as the face of fragrance Sauvage, the ads for which have been plastered in major cities this whole time.

Earlier this month, Depp turned up at the Dior show during Paris Fashion Week, a highly publicised event given it was the debut collection from designer Jonathan Anderson, who had been poached from Loewe.

He rubbed shoulders with Brigitte Macron and LVMH chair Bernard Arnault, who were willingly photographed with the actor. But when Charlize Theron went to greet Macron and Arnault, she turned away and blanked Depp, a former co-star, who was standing next to them.

So maybe not everyone is ready to forgive and forget. Not Theron. Not, as yet, the box office.

In a positive profile in The Times earlier this year, even Depp declared, “My comeback? Honestly? I didn’t go anywhere. If I actually had the chance to split, I would never come back.”

An empty threat perhaps. Like a spectre, Depp seems content to keep rattling his chains.