Star, humbug! Johnny Depp charms as cranky Scrooge in Comic-Con stunt

When you walk through the crowd at the annual San Diego Comic-Con, you run into everyone: Batman, a couple of Wonder Women, the cast of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. And even Charles Dickens’ iconic literary villain, the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge.But the crowds swarming this year’s event got a little more than they bargained for when Scrooge made a surprise appearance in the middle of the city’s Gaslamp quarter, outside the hastily assembled accounting offices of Scrooge & Marley.Johnny Depp appears as Ebenezer Scrooge at Comic-Con 2026.Behind the Victorian frock coat, top hat and prosthetic makeup was none other than actor Johnny Depp, who is playing Ebenezer Scrooge in a new film adaptation of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, titled Ebenezer.Even the setting – San Diego’s Gaslamp quarter – has a name that comfortably evokes the chilling setting of the horror-adjacent story about a miserable old man visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future. Though the fake show was a bit of a push on a summer day when the mercury pushed close to 30 degrees.Like many such stunts at Comic-Con, there was no pre-announcement. Keen-eyed fans in the area last night would have seen contractors fitting the Victorian Gothic facade to the building, and dumping the fake snow to complete the setting.But as launches go, it was a fitting kick-off for the Ebenezer marketing campaign, and a solid start to San Diego Comic-Con’s four-day movies-toys-and-TV celebration.Welcome to crazy town … 2026 San Diego Comic-Con gets under way.APAlmost 200,000 people will swarm around the heart of San Diego for the world’s biggest annual Comic-Con. Close to 150,000 of those will push through the turnstiles; the balance will crowd the surrounding neighbourhood, where film, TV and game studios have taken over storefronts and turned them into “activations” like the Ebenezer stunt.They range from the Paramount+ Lodge, with a Star Trek-themed bar and Dutton Ranch-inspired mock cattle-runs, to immersive experiences based on the upcoming HBO series Stuart Fails to Save the Universe and Lanterns, and the Apple TV+ series Silo.As a cultural moment, San Diego Comic-Con is the expression of a shared childhood: vintage toys tucked into boxes under the bed, costumes for dress-up, posters and action figures to create the wallpaper of fantasy micro-verses. For four and a half days a year, Comic-Con is all of those things, come out to play.But it is also an intersection of movie and TV marketing, the multibillion-dollar toy world, and the strange and vast world of comic books, once cheap, mass-produced weeklies aimed at kids, now a global business with adult wallets cleanly in its cross-hairs.Day one … the cast of Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender meet the fans at Comic-Con.AP Photo/Richard ShotwellInside the San Diego Convention Centre, there are panels promoting projects and tackling various topics and pop culture themes. Retailers and distributors are selling toys and merchandise. And studios have created vast displays, including a crowd hit showing off the newly unveiled costumes from Avengers Doomsday, this year’s big Christmas movie ticket.There are Star Wars toys, LEGO toys, DC Comics-branded toys and, in a nod to the old school hipsters, newly minted reprints of Mad Magazine’s Issue #1 being given away. And if you thought comic books were in short supply, there is a rabbit warren of alleyways filled with vendors, selling everything from dusty old copies of the classics to brand-new editions of iconic comic lines like The Avengers and Batman.Still to come: a weekend which will feature panels for the Apple TV movie Matchbox, Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and Blade Runner 2099, the new HBO DC Comics spin-off Lanterns, about the Green Lantern Corps, and Saturday’s big ticket: the Marvel panel, in which fans expect to get their first glimpse of Avengers: Doomsday.San Diego Comic-Con, the first event of its type in the world, which has since spawned an army of similar fan events dressed up as comic book conventions around the world, launched in 1970, and it is estimated the event sinks as much as $US150 million ($215 million) into the local San Diego economy.San Diego Comic-Con runs until Monday, Australian time.From our partners