Johnny Depp is back in theaters this year after the actor’s own production outfit, IN.2 Film, has locked a date for the United Kingdom and Ireland release of his latest movie.
Last year, Johnny Depp starred as the controversial French monarch King Louis XV in Maïwenn’s Jeanne du Barry (2023). Appearing alongside Maïwenn (The Fifth Element) herself, who plays the eponymous maiden, Jeanne du Barry opened the Cannes Film Festival in 2023 with festival director Thierry Frémaux calling it a “beautiful film,” highlighting the “magnificent” Johnny Depp. The decision to feature a Depp movie as the opener proved divisive due to the actor’s legal troubles over the last few years.
So far, Jeanne du Barry has not had a wide theatrical release; it came out in France across 650 screens on the same day as its Cannes premiere. Vertical Entertainment has distribution rights for the United States, and IN.2–Depp’s own production company–will release the film in the United Kingdom and Ireland beginning April 19, 2024.
“IN.2 will be working with Martin Myers’ Miracle Communications for cinema bookings in the UK, with plans to release in around 150-300 sites, while Wildcard is handling bookings in Ireland,” Screen Daily writes. IN.2 confirmed to the outlet that it plans to release more films in the UK. It is likely, then, that IN.2’s latest movie and Depp’s current directorial effort, Modi (TBD), starring Al Pacino (Scarface), will get released in the UK and Ireland. So far, there have been no updates regarding the release of Jeanne du Barry in the United States.
The movie grossed almost $4.1 million from 550,000 tickets in France, per Variety, and seemingly confirmed that Depp is hugely popular in the country where he lived for many years with his partner, Vanessa Paradis. The success of Depp’s movie in France came just one year after the highly-publicized lawsuits with ex-wife Amber Heard (Aquaman).
Touted as Depp’s comeback movie, Jeanne du Barry‘s release at Cannes came just under a year after the defamation lawsuit in the U.S. where Depp sued Heard for $50 million following the publishing of her op-ed in The Washington Post at the end of 2018. The Hollywood actress countersued her ex-husband for $100 million. The trial in Fairfax County, Virginia, ended with the jury finding both parties had defamed the other. Both were awarded damages in the case.
It was a different story in 2020, though, when Justice Andrew Nicol of London’s High Court sided with News Group Newspapers LTD in a high-profile libel trial. The judge found allegations of domestic abuse substantially true, and the result left Depp cast out of his role as the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald in the Warner Bros. Fantastic Beasts franchise. His role as Captain Jack Sparrow in The Walt Disney Company’s Pirates of the Caribbean series was also seemingly at its end.
In the years that have followed, and with his win in Virginia, seeds of his return to the swashbuckling blockbusters have surfaced. With Disney remaining non-committal and Depp enjoying his life away from Hollywood in the English countryside, will Pirates fans ever get to see Captain Jack Sparrow again? As time sails on, nothing can be ruled out.