Johnny Depp’s Ebenezer trailer keeps the familiar bones of A Christmas Carol, but Ti West appears ready to make Charles Dickens’ redemption tale stranger, harsher, and far more frightening. Paramount unveiled the first footage during San Diego Comic-Con 2026, where Depp also surprised attendees while fully dressed as Ebenezer Scrooge. The brief preview introduces Andrea Riseborough’s unnerving Ghost of Christmas Past, Ian McKellen’s Jacob Marley, Rupert Grint’s Bob Cratchit, and Sam Claflin’s Fred, while marketing Depp as The Master of Misfits (per TheWrap).
The adaptation still includes Scrooge’s hatred of Christmas, the three spirits, his memories, and his redemption. But the trailer’s “The name you know. The story you don’t” suggests Nathaniel Halpern’s screenplay will add new history and reshape his supernatural reckoning. These five changes are based on what Paramount has revealed so far.
Here are 5 apparent changes Ebenezer trailer makes to Charles Dickens’ original story.
5. Ti West Pushes Dickens’ Ghost Story Toward Horror
Ebenezer | Credit: YouTube/Paramount Pictures
Dickens never wrote A Christmas Carol as a cosy holiday comedy. Its original subtitle calls it A Ghost Story of Christmas, and the novella includes wandering souls, Marley’s bound jaw, a neglected corpse, graveyard imagery, and a hooded spirit who refuses to speak. Dickens wanted his ghostly idea to “haunt” readers, although he hoped it would do so pleasantly (via Project Gutenberg).
West appears less concerned with keeping that haunting pleasant. Ebenezer trailer presents the spirits as threatening intruders instead of eccentric guides. Its blood-red lettering, distorted bodies, bleak interiors, and sudden movements resemble a supernatural horror campaign more than the warm seasonal advertising attached to many earlier adaptations. The contrast makes sense when the director behind The House of the Devil, X, Pearl, and MaXXXine is handling the material. Paramount previously described West’s version as a dramatic and stylised reimagining, while the trailer leans into the terror of being judged by the dead.
I appreciate that choice because Scrooge should be frightened. He has spent decades ignoring suffering, and his redemption begins when he can no longer deny it. West’s ghosts seem designed to make every lesson painful enough to leave a lasting impact.
4. Christmas Past Has a Fixed, Adult Human Form
Ebenezer | Credit: YouTube/Paramount Pictures
Riseborough’s Ghost of Christmas Past provides the trailer’s most immediate departure from Dickens’ description. The film gives the spirit the recognisable form of an adult woman, although her pallid appearance, unnatural movements, and spectral clothing prevent her from seeming fully human (via PEOPLE). Dickens created something much harder to define. His spirit resembles a child and an old man at once, with white hair, an unlined face, unusually long arms, bare feet, summer flowers, and a beam of light emerging from its head. Its body also changes while Scrooge watches, shifting between one limb, many limbs, a disembodied head, and a complete figure (via Project Gutenberg).
Casting Riseborough gives Christmas Past a stable identity and allows the spirit to form a more direct relationship with both Depp’s Scrooge and Arthur Conti’s younger Ebenezer. The preview includes the ghost near both versions of the character, which could turn her into a recurring presence throughout his memories instead of a guide who accompanies him for one section of the story.
That change sacrifices some of Dickens’ visual ambiguity, but Riseborough has the right unsettling stillness for West’s approach. Her spirit looks like someone Scrooge could once have known, and that possibility may make his journey through memory more personal.
3. Johnny Depp’s Scrooge Is More Physically Aggressive
Ebenezer | Credit: YouTube/Paramount Pictures
Dickens’ Scrooge harms people through greed, neglect, and indifference. He underpays Cratchit, rejects charity, mocks Fred, and views poverty as a personal failure. His cruelty is economic and social. Depp’s version appears more openly aggressive, with the trailer showing Scrooge throwing snowballs, confronting Cratchit, and shouting at Marley. This portrayal suggests a man who actively provokes others rather than simply avoiding them.
This more volatile temperament suits Depp’s theatrical interpretation, but it also changes the type of reform the film must deliver. Dickens’ Scrooge needs to recover his sympathy. West’s Scrooge may have to control anger, repair direct harm, and confront why hostility has become entertainment for him.
The risk is obvious. If Scrooge becomes too flamboyant, audiences may enjoy his insults more than they care about his redemption. Depp has played enough eccentric outsiders to know how easily a cruel character can become charming. The trailer’s “Master of Misfits” introduction openly uses that history, so the film must make his misconduct cost something.
2. Ebenezer’s Past May Become a Larger Origin Story
Ebenezer | Credit: YouTube/Paramount Pictures
The poster reportedly carries the line, “Before he was Scrooge, he was Ebenezer,” while the trailer repeatedly stresses that viewers do not know the full story. Arthur Conti has been cast as young Ebenezer, and Ellie Bamber appears in the film’s past-era storyline connected to the Fezziwig family (per TheWrap, The News). Dickens already explains Scrooge’s transformation. Christmas Past shows his lonely childhood, Fezziwig’s apprenticeship, Belle’s departure, and the moment his pursuit of wealth changed him. These memories appear as selected moments viewed by an older man.
West’s adaptation appears prepared to spend more time inside that earlier life. Casting a dedicated young Scrooge and building the campaign around Ebenezer’s identity suggest that his history may function as a parallel narrative rather than a collection of brief recollections. Reports about the film have also described Halpern’s screenplay as adding new backstory to the familiar tale (per ComicBookMovie).
I have mixed feelings about that idea. Scrooge needs context, but a tragic childhood cannot become an excuse for decades of cruelty. The stronger version would explain him while preserving his responsibility for every choice that followed.
1. Scrooge’s Bed Becomes a Supernatural Trap
Ebenezer | Credit: YouTube/Paramount Pictures
The strangest shot in the trailer has Scrooge sinking into his mattress as though the bed is swallowing him. That does not happen in Dickens’ novella. In the original story, Christmas Past pulls apart Scrooge’s bed curtains, touches him, and takes him through the wall into the countryside of his childhood. The bed is where he waits for the spirit, but it never becomes a portal or physical threat (via Project Gutenberg)
West’s version turns the transition into a horror set piece and appears to reference Depp’s first film, Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. In Craven’s 1984 classic, Freddy Krueger drags Depp’s Glen into a bed before blood erupts from the opening. Ebenezer offers a milder variation, but the visual resemblance is too specific to ignore. It is a clever callback, although it also tells us something useful about West’s adaptation. Scrooge will not stand safely beside the ghosts while watching visions from a distance. His house, bedroom, and body may become part of the punishment.
Can Ebenezer Make the Familiar Story New Again?
Ebenezer | Credit: YouTube/Paramount Pictures
The first Ebenezer trailer withholds enough information to keep its boldest changes uncertain. Ian McKellen plays Jacob Marley, Rupert Grint portrays Bob Cratchit, Sam Claflin appears as Fred, Tramell Tillman takes on the Ghost of Christmas Present, and Arthur Conti portrays the younger Ebenezer Scrooge. Daisy Ridley, Charlie Murphy, Henry Lloyd-Hughes, and Ellie Bamber complete the principal ensemble. Ti West directed the film from Nathaniel Halpern’s screenplay, and production took place in the United Kingdom earlier in 2026.
Which apparent change has you most curious, and do you think West can make Scrooge frightening without losing the warmth of Dickens’ ending? Bring your best to the comments, and follow FandomWire for more trailer breakdowns!
Ebenezer arrives exclusively in theaters on November 13, 2026, through Paramount Pictures.
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