Johnny Depp Officially Reveals Which Director He Would Love to Reunite With

Every adaptation of Charles Dickens’ timeless ghost story has been a delightful blend of festive cheer and whimsical terror, and now, A Christmas Carol returns to the big screen as Paramount Pictures’ Ebenezer, in the hands of horror filmmaker Ti West. After the writer and director, best known for the X Trilogy, was brought on to adapt Nathaniel Halpern’s (Legion) screenplay, he and star Johnny Depp met under bizarre circumstances that led the duo to believe this was a match written in the stars, they tell Collider’s Steve Weintraub.

Depp, who’s spent decades creating unforgettable on-screen characters, stars as the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, who’s visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future on one unbelievable night that will change his life forever. The movie also stars Rupert Grint, Tramell Tillman, Andrea Riseborough, Sam Claflin, Daisy Ridley, Arthur Conti, Ellie Bamber, and Ian McKellen.

In this interview, Depp and West look back at their own pasts, revisiting special moments from their careers, and share the story behind their first meeting for Ebenezer that signaled to the two of them that this collaboration was “meant to be.” Depp also shares his personal approach to scenes, and how he lands on performances for iconic characters like Captain Jack Sparrow, Edward Scissorhands, and more.

Johnny Depp Reveals the Director He’d Love to Reunite With for a Day

And Ti West discusses shutting down Hollywood Boulevard on MaXXXine.

COLLIDER: First of all, I want to start with congratulations on the film. I thought you guys did a great job, and I’ve decided you two should make another movie together, so let’s make that happen.

JOHNNY DEPP: I think that’s a great idea.

TI WEST: You’ll be funding it. We’ll be ready to go. Cuts a lot of the legwork out for me. I appreciate that.

100%. Absolutely. My first question is, if you were visited by the ghost of Movies Past and could revisit one day from your career, what day would you love to revisit?

DEPP: Wow, a moment from somewhere in my career? A moment. I’ll tell you the truth. Honestly, mostly because I worshiped and I adored him, and we sadly lost him when he was 39 years old, Ted Demme, who directed the film Blow, who was a great pal. I mean, a great pal, and a great, very funny man. I would bring back any day that we were doing the film Blow together because he was magic. He was just a beautiful, amazing, amazingly talented, and down-to-earth, funny, funny guy.

What’s amazing is that Teddy’s son, Dexter, and my son, Jack, became friends completely by accident. They just met each other in school when they were, like, eight years old, and they’re still best friends to this day. It’s incredible. So, Ted Demme. I’d go back to Ted Demme.

Thank you for answering.

WEST: I had a very cool one on MaXXXine where we had shut down on Hollywood Boulevard, which for someone who was like, “Oh, maybe one day I could make movies,” to shut down Hollywood Boulevard, which is a hassle… I remember standing there in the middle of the night, and everyone’s pissed off because the road’s closed and it’s a major thoroughfare, and it’s dressed to look like the ‘80s, and I’m standing there with my dog — also no longer with us — and I remember just thinking, “This is crazy.”

Like, I went, “You know what’d be a cool idea for a movie?” and now I’m standing here with Hollywood Boulevard completely shut down, and I have a video store from the ‘80s, and all this stuff, and all these ‘80s period cars, and I was like, “This is all my fault.” Because I went, “You know what might be cool is if we did this?” And then somehow all these great people got together and made that happen, and I don’t know that that will ever happen again. So, it was very cool. One of those surreal moments.

And we had that in front of the Chinese Theater, also, which is just a really strange thing. As someone who goes, “It’d be cool to make a movie,” to be doing that is really strange and surreal.

Johnny, if [The Mad Hatter], Jack Sparrow, and Ebenezer Scrooge all got in a room together for 24 hours, who is the first person to lose their mind?

DEPP: [Laughs] So it’s The Hatter, Ebenezer, and Captain Jack?

Yeah.

DEPP: Well, at least two of them are already insane. But no, I would have to say, I think it would be Captain Jack Sparrow. He would have to find a way away from those types.

WEST: Talking to them for too long?

DEPP: Yeah.

Johnny Depp and Ti West’s First Meeting Took an Unexpected Turn

“It was so strange that that happened.”

The first time a director and actor meet, it’s almost like a first date. You’re feeling each other out, you’re seeing if you work together and whether or not you’re going to get divorced halfway through the shoot.

DEPP: Our first meeting, the electricity went out.

WEST: That’s actually a great story.

When you sit down for the first time, and you definitely want Johnny in the movie, and you probably want this role…

DEPP: Oh, yeah. Of course.

What is that first meeting like? Did you immediately feel like, “Oh, we can get married, this is going to work?”

DEPP: I definitely did. I’d seen a number of his other films, and I was very impressed. This guy works. These are not easy things to put together. These are big puzzles, and complicated, and he had done it at least three or four times that I’d seen, and I was very impressed.

But then when we met, my fear meeting folks, directors or whoever that I don’t know, is that they’re going to be afraid, they’re going to already be a little bit worried about what I might offer as the character. That’s to say that there’s probably a little bit of a tendency to have the fear that I may come into this way over the top or something.

That was a very quick conversation between Ti and I early on because you have to pay respects to Charles Dickens, you have to pay your respects to the screenwriter, the filmmaker, the visionary, and then you have to take care of the character. So, putting all those things together was very easy.

I found Ti instantly ready to just try anything. We would get the takes that we thought would be the right ones, or the right words for this or that, and then you go on, and you try a couple of things. So, he was very, very collaborative on that level. So for me, it was a gas every day.

WEST: But what you should know anecdotally is that I went to a place that he was staying, and it was a non-modern place, a very old-fashioned place, and when we were there, the power went out, and we were stuck there. So our entire first meeting — this is not made up — our entire first meeting is by candlelight.

DEPP: By candlelight.

WEST: And so in comes Johnny with a little candle, and we’re sitting there eating some food at his table in pitch black, talking about the movie by candlelight, like two of the least methody kind of people in the most method meeting ever for the movie. But there was something about that that, I guess it broke the ice, but it helped us talk about it. But it was so strange that that happened.

DEPP: We were walking from the dining room or whatever back into the sort of hangout room by candle, walking through this old house.

WEST: It was meant to be in a way.

Johnny Depp Reveals the Secret to His Most Eccentric Characters

“There is a genuine truth and emotion to it.”

Image via Paramount Pictures

I love the way you work. I’m a huge fan, and I’m very, very curious, do you have a pre-scene ritual to help you get ready when you’re doing the first take of something? How are you getting ready to start filming?

DEPP: I suppose the pre-scene ritual, for me, is to have no expectation. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know what’s going to happen as soon as I step into the ring, as it were. I mean, I may have an idea of how to approach it. It’s certainly something that Ti and I talked about, but I don’t know how it’s going to play yet, because that comes from being in it.

Like when you’re sitting with Sir Ian [McKellen], who I worship, I don’t know how anything is going to go because I haven’t received his… If he gives me a bunch of things, words, we’re having conversations, then I will react.

So essentially, I suppose, yeah, there are times when one has to rev up in a scene — come from here and go to there — but I don’t have any preconceived idea of how the scene should go or actually end up. It’s really more like how I’m going to behave, and I’m going to react. So, I just don’t have any expectations of what might go down, which is a good thing for me because, well, you can be. You can just be in the moment.

WEST: Yeah. You may think from the characters that you have experienced or seen… I mean, I thought, which is what you were saying when we first met, “What am I getting myself into? How’s he going to make this character? How far is it going to go?” and things like that. And there’s a remarkable lack of pageantry to it. You can drop into it immediately, and I think it’s because there is a genuine truth and emotion to it.

So if I said, “Hey, could you be over here?” “Yeah, no problem.” “Could you be over there?” “Yeah, no problem.” “Do you think you could get the prop on that part?” “Yeah. No problem.” But when it’s go time, I think you experience it truthfully.

And as eccentric and as loud as the characters you’ve played over the years may be — I can only speak from my experience in this movie — once you know where you need to be, whatever happens just sort of happens in a very genuine way. And I think that’s a real tribute to whatever it is that you do because it’s amazing to watch, because it happens like that.

Ebenezer is in theaters starting November 13.

Release Date

November 13, 2026

Runtime

116 Minutes

Director

Ti West