Johnny Depp's Scrooge Is Warned 'Your Nightmare Has Just Begun' in New 'Ebenezer' Teaser

Paramount’s Ebenezer has a new teaser. The film’s official account on X posted the clip on October 18, 2026, captioned “Your nightmare has just begun,” with the hashtag #EbenezerMovie and a reminder that it is “only in theatres November 13.” It runs 15 seconds and is framed vertically in a 4:5 ratio at 1080 by 1350 pixels — the shape studios build for phone feeds rather than cinema screens.

Across those 15 seconds the teaser plays a short exchange between Scrooge and the ghost of his dead business partner. “Ebenezer, you will be haunted by three spirits,” warns Jacob Marley — the line Ian McKellen delivers in the film’s full trailer. Johnny Depp’s Scrooge answers with a retort that has belonged to the character since the earliest film versions: “I’m not in the habit of speaking with the dead.” The clip then lands on the phrase the campaign has adopted as its slogan, “Your nightmare has just begun,” and finally on the title itself.

The lettering on screen is sparse. A “Johnny Depp” billing card appears during the clip, and a closing card carries the title, the words “Only in theatres November 13,” the film’s website and the #EbenezerMovie tag. The teaser is dark throughout and graded in cold blue-green tones with warmer amber highlights, in keeping with the gothic register the studio has promoted from the start.

As a teaser, though, it reveals very little. It adds no plot detail, no new cast or release information, and it stops far short of the full trailer. Its closing line is not new either: Andrea Riseborough’s spirit says “Your nightmare has just begun” in the second full trailer, released on October 1. One line in the clip — Scrooge’s “I’m not in the habit of speaking with the dead” — does not appear in that second trailer’s dialogue as released, so the cut may draw on material beyond it; a 15-second teaser is too brief to settle the question. What the piece is, plainly, is the latest beat in a long promotional run: a vertical social cut timed for the final month before release.

From Comic-Con to a social cut

The film has been teased in stages through 2026. A first trailer played at San Diego Comic-Con on July 23, where Depp appeared in character on the Gaslamp streets and on stage; Deadline described the look as “very period, very dark gothic,” comparing it to Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd. The first full trailer followed on October 1, covered by Deadline, Variety, UPI and others. On October 14 the account posted a shorter clip captioned “It’s what he does best” — another promo built from the same material, as this site reported at the time. The October 18 post continues that pattern.

The film behind the tease

Ebenezer is directed by Ti West, whose previous films include the horror trilogy X, Pearl and MaXXXine. Nathaniel Halpern wrote the screenplay, adapted from Dickens’s 1843 novella, and Emma Watts produces through Wattsco and IN.2 Film, with Paramount Pictures distributing. Depp leads a cast that includes Ian McKellen as Marley, Andrea Riseborough, Rupert Grint and Daisy Ridley as the married couple Bob and Emily Cratchit, alongside Sam Claflin, Arthur Conti, Ellie Bamber, Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Charlie Murphy and Tramell Tillman. Paramount’s logline for the film is a single line: “The name you know, the story you don’t.”

The release is also Depp’s first Hollywood studio film in eight years, since Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald in 2018. He follows Ebenezer with Day Drinker for Lionsgate, due in March 2027.

Ebenezer opens in UK and US theatres on November 13, 2026. With about four weeks to go, the studio’s social accounts are carrying the campaign — and leaning on a single line to sell this Christmas Carol as a fright rather than a carol.

Sources

Deadline (Anthony D’Alessandro, “Ebenezer Trailer: Johnny Depp Leads Ti West’s Dickens Remake,” October 1, 2026, and the July 23, 2026 Comic-Con report); Variety (Ellise Shafer, “Ebenezer New Trailer: Johnny Depp’s First Hollywood Studio Movie in 8 Years Reimagines A Christmas Carol,” October 1, 2026); UPI (Annie Martin, October 1, 2026); Yahoo Entertainment (Tom Parfitt, October 1, 2026); Radio Times (Molly Moss, October 1, 2026); Soap Central (Archi Biswas, October 1, 2026); Bloody Disgusting, “Ebenezer Trailer 2,” October 1, 2026; Paramount Pictures, official Ebenezer trailer; and the film’s official account on X (@ebenezermovie), October 18, 2026, https://x.com/ebenezermovie/status/2111864754004492335.