#tagline

This poster, whose sly tagline I did not entirely understand as a young sobsister, is the one I most associate with this groundbreaking film.

Internationally, the title did not change very much, simply being translated, in most cases, into the target language for its audience, e.g., Gola profonda in Italy and Gorge profonde in France.

However, the German release includes a subtitle that I thought was rather charming:

"The mouth that makes wishes come true"

“Before he was Scrooge, he was…”

I’m guessing that they chose that tagline, and maybe the title of Ebenezer, to try to cash in on the trend of Wicked, Cruella, etc. and sell this movie as the previously-unknown, sympathetic origin story of one of pop culture’s most famous bad guys, which will reveal how he became the baddie we know.

Except Scrooge doesn’t need that.

Scrooge already has a sympathetic backstory and we already know how he became a mean miser. One third of A Christmas Carol’s central storyline is devoted to exploring just that. Nor will it be anything new to explore his past in more depth than Dickens’ short book had the space to do: just look at the 1951 Alastair Sim version!

I think the poster might be trying to mislead us a little bit, by framing the movie as a new perspective flip or expanded origin story for Scrooge, when really it’s just another adaptation of the original story (albeit one that might turn out to be very creative).

Fortunately, the new teaser trailer doesn’t seem to be doing the same thing, at least not very much. It does say "The Name You Know, the Story You Don't" at one point, but otherwise, it’s so focused on marketing Johnny Depp that it doesn't bother to paint the actual plot as anything but a straightforward adaptation of A Christmas Carol. And I think it looks like a promising movie – I was concerned it might lean too hard into the “horror” aspect of the story, but while it clearly is going to play up the darkness and spookiness in some ways, it also seems clear (mainly from Depp’s scenery chewing) that there will be plenty of comedy in it, so it won’t become too bleak.