Is Johnny Depp's Ebenezer Too Scary for Kids? PG-13 for Frightening Material, 116 Minutes, Reported Test Scores in the 80s, and My Rule for Who Should Buy a Ticket on Nov. 13

Here's the thing most of us forget every December: Charles Dickens meant A Christmas Carol to be a ghost story. The full title on the 1843 book calls it exactly that. A chained spirit shows up, a lonely man gets shown his own gravestone, and somewhere along the way a century and a half of mugs, musicals and puppets sanded the fear down into something we can watch with cocoa. So when Paramount announced a version from Ti West, the director behind the X trilogy, with Johnny Depp as Scrooge, my first reaction wasn't "why?" It was "oh, finally, someone remembered."

My second reaction was a parent's one: wait, can I bring a kid to this? That's the question people are typing into Google, and it's the one this guide is built around. A note on how I wrote it: I haven't seen Ebenezer, and when I checked on November 7 there was no published Rotten Tomatoes score yet. So this is a decision guide, not a review. The facts come from the rating bulletin, studio and trade reporting, and listings, and my opinions are labeled as opinions.

Ebenezer at a glance: release date, rating, runtime, cast and crew

Start with the plain facts, since a movie with this much noise around it collects a lot of half-remembered ones.

Dates, rating, runtime and budget were checked against the sources below on November 7, 2026. Listings can change.

One more detail worth knowing: the film's tagline, as reported by Bloody Disgusting, is "The name you know. The story you don't." Wikipedia files the movie as a gothic dark fantasy and black comedy-thriller. That's a lot of genres for a story most people think of as one.

What "PG-13 for frightening material" does and doesn't tell you

The MPA gives every PG-13 a short reason, and this one is notable for what's missing from it. There's no mention of violence, language or sexual content, only frightening material. For a ghost story, that's the descriptor you'd expect. It's also honest in a way I appreciate: Paramount isn't pretending this is a sing-along.

What the rating can't tell you is how frightening. PG-13 spans a huge range. It covers a jump-scare movie that rattles a 12-year-old and a ghost movie that mostly hums with dread, and those are different evenings. The best clue I have is the marketing. Early coverage, including a Horror Fuel report relayed by Upstormed News, describes the film as built on spectral dread and psychological unease rather than gore. That fits a PG-13 and it fits a director known for slow-building horror.

Here's my opinion. A PG-13 from Ti West is a different animal than a PG-13 from a studio comedy. West's recent work was a trilogy Box Office Pro calls sex-themed horror, and now he's making something rated PG-13, a label that tells parents to use caution for kids under 13. I'm curious whether he sanded his instincts down or aimed them somewhere new. Until reviews land, I'd assume the dread is real and the gore is not.

My age-by-age guide: who should go and who should wait

These are my judgment calls, built from the rating, the genre and the story's ghosts. They aren't based on having seen the film, and no one knows your kid like you do.

A practical note that parents tend to skip: 116 minutes is long for a school-night showing. A Dutch cinema listing estimated about two hours and 15 minutes once previews run, and I'd plan the same way for a U.S. theater. If your kid is on the fence, a matinee with an early bedtime beats a late show with a restless child.

The scare ladder: four Christmas Carols, ranked by how much they might haunt you

I find it easier to place a new movie on a map than to judge it in a vacuum. Ratings below come from The Numbers, Rotten Tomatoes and Box Office Mojo. The dots are my expectation of scariness, not data, and for Ebenezer they're a forecast based on the rating and the director's reputation.

Why this version is a bigger gamble than it looks

On paper, a Christmas Carol is the safest title in the building. Everybody knows the story. But the people making this one are betting that familiarity is a weakness and that audiences are hungry for the version they haven't seen. There are three pieces to that bet.

Then there's the number that made the rounds in August. Dark Horizons, citing a Puck News report, said a first-cut test screening in New Jersey scored in the 80s, with Depp himself at 86 overall and 90 among women over 35. For comparison, the same report put a typical first-cut score around 72 and a typical lead character's score around 67.

I'd hold that loosely. Test scores are real signals, but they're also the kind of number studios are happy to see reported, and a test audience is not a critic and not a ticket buyer. What I'd take from it is narrower: whatever the first cut was, the people watching didn't hate it. The harder tightrope is tonal. A movie that is scary enough for horror fans and warm enough for a holiday crowd has to land a very specific balance, and the history of Christmas Carols is full of versions that picked one.

The box office math: what "hit" means for a $37 to $40 million Christmas Carol

Box Office Pro's long-range forecast, published in October, put Ebenezer's opening weekend at $25 million to $35 million. Box office columnist Todd Thatcher, writing on November 6, predicted $20.3 million. That's a wide gap, and it tells you the industry doesn't really know how this one will play.

Here's the context I find most useful. These are earlier Christmas Carols' opening weekends, in nominal dollars with no adjustment for inflation or theater count, so read them as a rough ladder, not a ruling.

Openings: The Numbers (1992, 1988), Boxoffice Watch comparison data (2009). Budgets: The Numbers and Box Office Mojo. These are nominal dollars, so the older films would be much larger after inflation.

The detail that jumps out is the 2009 Disney version. It opened to about $30 million and finished around $138 million domestically, according to Boxoffice Watch, but it cost $200 million to make. Ebenezer costs a fraction of that, so an opening in the same neighborhood would be a far better result financially. That's why I think the budget is the most important number in this story.

A rough rule of thumb, and it is only my arithmetic, is that a film needs about two to two and a half times its production budget at the worldwide box office to break even after marketing and theater splits. On a $37 to $40 million film, that points to roughly $75 million to $100 million worldwide. A $25 million opening that holds well through the holidays gets there. A $20 million opening that falls fast might not.

The calendar matters, too. Ebenezer opens against How to Rob a Bank (Box Office Pro's range: $10 million to $15 million) and Paper Tiger, with Godzilla Minus Zero and The Cat in the Hat in their second weekends, per The Hollywood Reporter. And there's a deadline. Sunrise on the Reaping opens November 20, and Boxoffice Watch calls it November's only tentpole. That gives Depp's Scrooge one clean weekend before the biggest movie of the month arrives. My opinion: that makes the second weekend the real test, and it's why the word-of-mouth question matters more than the opening number.

My verdict, my scorecard and three questions to ask before you buy tickets

I haven't seen the film, so this is an expectations scorecard, not a review. The scores are opinion, not data.

My overall take is curious and a little protective. I love that someone wanted to remember that this story is supposed to unsettle you. A Christmas Carol only works if Scrooge is afraid, because the fear is what makes the change feel earned. I'd go in hoping for a film that gets that right, and I'd go in knowing it may not be the movie you wanted to take your nine-year-old to.

If you're deciding, here are three questions I'd ask before buying tickets:

1. Does everyone in your group like to be scared? A movie described as spectral dread is a gamble for the one person who doesn't. Ask them before you buy their ticket.
2. Are you coming for the holiday feeling or the director? If it's the first, an older version might serve you better. If it's the second, you're the audience Ebenezer was made for.
3. Can you wait a day or two? Reviews and parent write-ups tend to show up quickly after a Friday opening. If your group is on the fence, patience is free.

That's my read before opening night. Which side of the ladder are you on, Muppets or Marley?

Ebenezer questions, answered fast