“We want Johnny! We want Johnny!” hordes of fans are chanting into the chilly November air. Actors like Rupert Grint, Sam Claflin, Andrea Riseborough and Ellie Bamber stroll the red carpet, surrounded by a lavish, Victorian gothic set replete with fake snow and cobblestones. Content creators and ex-Love Islanders are in sight, too. But the chorus of acolytes aren’t here for any of them. They’re here for Johnny Depp, a man who, just six years ago, in a courtroom just down the road, was told by a High Court judge that the claim Depp is a wife-beater is “substantially true”. In the interim, Depp successfully sued his ex-wife, Amber Heard, for defamation in the US, where she first alleged his abuse.

But this, the global premiere of , is Depp’s biggest comeback attempt since that fateful judgement. He is playing the eponymous character in Paramount’s Christmas film, the studio betting the film’s £28m budget on the public having forgotten the grimmer details of Depp and Heard’s toxic marriage. 

As with any A Christmas Carol adaptation, the story follows a series of ghosts taking Ebenezer Scrooge through his life’s misdeeds. Maybe this marks an opportune time for Depp to reflect on his own?

Depp has always maintained his innocence, and in 2018, after a journalist at called him a “wife-beater”, citing evidence Heard had given in her divorce filings, Depp sued the paper’s owner for libel.

At the 2020 hearing, the court found that, on 12 occasions, Depp had abused Heard, and his attempt to appeal the verdict soon failed. Depp then took his case Stateside, suing Heard for $50m (£37.5m) for defamation. The case centred on an op-ed she had written in 2018 where she did not name Depp, but referred to herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse”. Heard countersued, alleging Depp’s lawyer Adam Waldman had defamed her in 2020.

The televised case revealed Depp’s darkest side yet. There was evidence of his drunken and drug-fuelled destruction of their home, footage of him throwing objects at Heard, and harrowing testimony from Heard alleging that Depp had sexually assaulted her with a broken bottle. The text evidence was as clear as day: Depp saying he would drown, burn and rape her – a Monty Python reference, he insisted – or calling her a “lesbian camp counsellor”, a “whore” and a “c**t”.

The Virginia court believed Depp’s argument that Heard had defamed him on three counts, and Waldman defamed her on one. Heard was ordered to pay Depp $10.35m.

Depp also had the court of public opinion on his side, the case having spilled out online into viral videos, memes and commentary from manosphere favourites and longtime Depp fans. On TikTok, the #JusticeForJohnnyDepp hashtag had 20.4 billion views, while #JusticeForAmberHeard reached around 88.6 million views. An investigation by later found that many of Depp’s online supporters were bots with pro-Saudi links. 

Regardless of where you stood on Depp vs Heard, it represented a startling fall from grace for the actor. This was the heartthrob from 21 Jump Street and . He used to be one of Hollywood’s biggest earners for his roles as oddballs like and . Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise was a global hit, and for the fifth instalment, he’d earned a reported $90m playing Captain Jack Sparrow.

Throughout, he maintained a rock star side-hustle, mixing hard drinking, drug abuse and dating famous women like Kate Moss and Winona Ryder while collaborating with musicians like Alice Cooper, Keith Richards and Marilyn Manson.

Despite Depp’s on-screen flamboyancy and bombast, he claims a shyness, telling Iggy Pop in a 2014 interview that he enjoyed “hiding behind these characters”. He also drew controversy in 2011 for saying that when he has his photo taken “you just feel like you’re being raped somehow”.

That comment, for which he later apologised, landed during promotion of , the film where he, aged 46, first met the 22-year-old Heard, his co-star. His 11-year relationship with French triple-threat Vanessa Paradis was soon over, and he and Heard began dating. (Heard now lives in Madrid, Spain, with her two children and has barely acted since the court cases.) 

Conversely, Depp has long been working to rehabilitate his image and return to playing “strange theatrical characters”, explains Lauren Beeching, a crisis PR and reputational management specialist. She tells The i Paper: “Studios aren’t in the business of deciding who deserves forgiveness. They’re in the business of deciding who people will pay to see. And Johnny Depp still has a huge audience.”

He’s also applied the old mantra of “never complain, never explain”, Beeching says: “I think the most striking thing is how little he’s actually said. He hasn’t gone around explaining himself. I think that’s sensible because every time you talk about a scandal, you push it straight back into the headlines.”

She adds: “He’s also let other people speak for him. So when Dior renewed his contract after the trial, that really mattered.”

This multimillion-dollar fragrance campaign, combined with his consistent work, has helped his star power, Beeching says: “He didn’t disappear; he kept working, and that gave people something new to talk about.”

Depp may not have been attached to a studio film for the past eight years, but has starred in several lower-budget films, mostly funded by small European production houses. Depp’s first red carpet outing after the trials came in 2023, when Jeanne du Barry – funded by Saudi Arabia – premiered at Cannes.

Now Depp’s had his big global premiere for a studio production, a film marketing insider is circumspect on how r will be received: “This marketing campaign has used a significant budget to get Johnny out there and make this film feel big, but the film world sold their stock in Johnny Depp long ago.”

Another film industry source, who was recently on set with Depp, is far less optimistic about the actor’s prospects: “ is a weird place to put all your money… Depp is clearly not very bankable but I think a few uninspired people think he’s got this unwavering support [base], so at least all of people will go and see anything he does.”

Depp, it is reported, was paid a relatively low sum of $5m for . With a net worth of $150m – despite previous financial turmoil and lavish spending – he arguably never needs to work in film again. His artwork sells for up to £17,500 per piece, and he spends most of his time in a sprawling £13m estate in Somerset. He is keeping any romance private – his last rumoured partner was Yulia Vlasova, a 31-year-old beautician.

Yet he persists in trying to resurrect his career. Paramount and Depp’s co-stars are all backing his quest, as are those chanting fans. Whether a decent portion of the public will join them for this ersatz tale of redemption is yet to be seen. But regardless of ‘s box office performance, “this isn’t being treated as a one-off experiment”, Beeching says, pointing out that Lionsgate is set to release his next film, , in March 2028.

Many thought time was up back in 2017. But for Depp, who has since called himself “the crash-test dummy for #MeToo”, it keeps ticking on.