Box Office: Johnny Depp Returns To #1 After 8 Years, Knocks Down Godzilla

Nov 15, 2026 - 20:06

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Box Office: Johnny Depp Returns To #1 After 8 Years, Knocks Down Godzilla

Credit: Jaap Buitendijk / © Paramount Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

Published Nov 15, 2026, 11:34 AM EST

Brennan Klein (he/him) is a senior news writer at Screen Rant, host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast, and contributor at Alternate Ending and Horror Press. He has been writing and podcasting about pop culture (especially horror movies) for over a decade at platforms including Blumhouse, Fangoria, Dread Central, The Backlot, and Arrow in the Head.

Ebenezer has received an early Christmas present at the box office.

The new adaptation of Charles Dickens' holiday classic A Christmas Carol stars Johnny Depp in the title role as Scrooge. 2026's Ebenezer, which opened on November 13, marks the first domestic wide release to star Depp since 2018's Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. He was recast with Mads Mikkelsen in the third Fantastic Beasts movie after his then-wife Amber Heard accused him of domestic abuse. His defamation lawsuit against Heard and her countersuit against him weren't fully settled until June 2022. He has not starred in any major movies during that entire process and the ensuing four years.

Per Variety, as of Sunday morning, Ebenezer is projected to earn a 3-day total of $19 million at the domestic box office by the end of its opening weekend. This is enough for the movie to launch at No. 1, becoming the first Johnny Depp movie to do so since Grindelwald, though that movie earned considerably more with a 3-day debut of $62.2 million. This sees it dethroning the previous weekend's No. 1 title, Godzilla Minus Zero, which had the biggest domestic debut in history for a live-action foreign language movie.

While this debut is roughly in line with the debut of Depp's non-franchise movie Black Mass ($22.6 million), it still pales in comparison to the previous wide release adaptation of A Christmas Carol featuring a major star as Scrooge. Robert Zemeckis' animated, Jim Carrey-led 2009 movie A Christmas Carol debuted with $30 million in 2009, blowing the Depp adaptation out of the water without even being adjusted for inflation.

However, Ebenezer is projected to earn a similar amount overseas this weekend, bringing its global debut to roughly $42 million. The mid-budget movie reportedly cost $38 million with a marketing spend of $50 million, likely placing its estimated break-even point at $176 million. With this kind of start, it has a chance at breaking even in theaters if it has strong retention. While critics' Ebenezer reviews have earned it a Rotten Tomatoes splat with 54%, audience members have given it a Verified Hot 90%, indicating that it could develop the word of mouth it needs.

Below, see the full domestic Top 5 chart for the weekend:

Title

3-Day Total

Cumulative (Domestic)

1	Ebenezer	$19 million	$19 million (weekend 1)
2	The Cat in the Hat	$11.4 million	$38.2 million (weekend 2)
3	Godzilla Minus Zero	$8.3 million	$48.1 million (weekend 2)
4	Ramayana: Rise of a Legend	$5.5 million	$24.1 million (weekend 2)
5	You Can See Everything	$5.4 million	$89 million (weekend 5)

Not only did Ebenezer knock Godzilla Minus Zero from No. 1, the kaiju movie fell even further due to a huge projected week-on-week drop of 75%, which marks the worst sophomore drop in history for a first-run Godzilla movie at the domestic box office. It has fallen to No. 3, skirting around the animated Dr. Seuss movie The Cat in the Hat, which maintained its place at No. 2 with a slimmed 45% drop. However, its cumulative $38.2 million gross is still lukewarm when considering its reported budget of $92 million.

There was no movement lower down on the chart either, with the Bollywood epic Ramayana: Rise of a Legend (now the second highest-grossing Indian movie in North America) and You Can See Everything maintaining their places at No. 4 and No. 5 respectively. However, the arrival of Ebenezer has completely ousted Angel Studios' historical drama Drummer Boy, which was on the chart at No. 3 last weekend.

Meanwhile, the new Nicholas Hoult crime movie How to Rob a Bank has failed to break into the Top 5. With a projected 3-day debut of $5 million, which is lower than his 2023 flop Renfield ($8 million), it should debut at No. 7, giving it a very soft start against its reported $40 million budget. The Jim Caviezel action movie Ghost Soldier had a similar reception, debuting at No. 6 with $5.2 million. However, it has a much slimmer reported budget of $18 million.

ChronoLogic

Rearrange the movies into the correct US release order.

Overall, even though Ebenezer took No. 1, its soft debut sees it leading a weekend where the entire domestic box office is expected to gross roughly $80 million, which - if those numbers hold - would make this the fifth-worst weekend of 2026 so far, behind the $84.2 million weekend of January 30, when the Top 3 was filled out by the new releases Send Help, Iron Lung, and Melania.

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