A facetious fellow, pondering the career prospects of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard after that trial, might contend the job of movie star has gone the way of the fletcher or the lamplighter. Big films now sell themselves on intellectual property — Batman, Fast & Furious, James Bond — rather than the white-teethed actors at the top of the bill. Yes, Tom Cruise may be a rare exception. But he couldn’t have clocked up those record weekend figures without the Top Gun brand. Can Heard and Depp still open a film? Can anyone?
That noted, it is reasonable to wonder what the case has done to the actors’ careers. After all, the proceedings were primarily concerned with how stories about their relationship had (or had not) affected future earnings. Depp brought the defamation case as response to a Washington Post op-ed by Heard in which, without mentioning her former partner by name, she wrote about being “a public figure representing domestic abuse”. Heard then countersued. Each alleged specific setbacks. Depp’s team claimed he had lost out on $22.5 million that would have come his way for playing Jack Sparrow in a proposed sixth Pirates of the Caribbean film. Heard argued that her role in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, sequel to a DC superhero hit, had been “pared down” following publicity about her abuse allegations against Depp. The case came after Depp lost a defamation suit against the Sun newspaper for labelling him a “wife beater”.
As anyone who has walked passed a Twitter account in the last month will be aware, the claims and counterclaims became inhumanely twisted. As far back as 2018, The Hollywood Reporter asked Sean Bailey, film production chief at Disney, whether Pirates of the Caribbean, then being developed with Deadpool’s Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, could “survive without Johnny Depp”. His answer was cautious. “We want to bring in a new energy and vitality,” he replied. “I love the [Pirates] movies, but part of the reason Paul and Rhett are so interesting is that we want to give it a kick in the pants. And that’s what I’ve tasked them with.” Make of that what you will.
[ Key moments in Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s defamation trialOpens in new window ]
As for Aquaman, Walter Hamada, DC Films president, testified that the trimming of Heard’s role was due to unsatisfactory connection with her co-star Jason Momoa. “They didn’t have a lot of chemistry together,” he said. “The reality is it’s not uncommon on movies for two leads to not have chemistry and it’s sort of movie magic and editorial — the ability to put performances with the magic of a great score and how you put the pieces together, you can fabricate that chemistry.”
The argument seems to be that the mainly positive result from the court case will propel him right back to the top of the tree
At any rate, in a confusing decision, the jury in Virginia came down largely on Depp’s side. He received $10 million in compensatory and $5 million in punitive damages. But Heard also picked up $2 million in compensatory damages.
In the aftermath, the Daily Mirror quoted a “reputation management consultant” as claiming that Depp’s career was going to “skyrocket”. “He not only has the heart of the consumer in his hands,” Alexandra Villa of In House PR said. “He may be able to pick and choose some of the biggest movies coming out in the next few years.”
Well, you never know. The difficulty here is that Depp’s career was slumping long before he and Heard got engaged m’ learned friends. Mortdecai, Transcendence and Black Mass were all notable flops. City of Lies, in which he played a cop investigating the death of Notorious BIG, went nowhere. The true-life drama Minamata (about which more in a minute) took a modest €1.12 million ($1.2 million) worldwide. A 2018 article in Rolling Stone painted a troubled picture. “Over the passed 18 months, there has been little but bad news for Depp. In addition to the financial woes, there were reports he couldn’t remember his lines and had to have them fed to him through an earpiece,” Stephen Rodrick wrote. The article went on to note: “there were whispers that Depp’s recreational drug and alcohol use were crippling him.” The Guardian described him as “mired in divorce, drugs and legal hell, his reputation now destroyed”. (Depp later claimed the earpiece was used to pipe “disturbing noises into his ear”.)
The argument seems to be that the mainly positive result from the court case will propel him right back to the top of the tree. It is hard to think of anything like that happening before. Johnny Depp is still a 58-year-old actor in search of a hit. His last success was probably Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald in 2018, but he resigned from the JK Rowling franchise following the Sun ruling and was subsequently replaced by Mads Mikkelsen.
Will such solidarity keep Heard’s career aloft? As Zhou Enlai didn’t exactly say about the French Revolution, it is ‘too early to tell’
One should not be too swayed by the fanatical online following that gathered around Depp during the trial. True, they managed to make the weather for a while. Furious tapping got Minamata, a story of a mercury poisoning case in Japan, up to number three in the Academy Awards’ absurd #OscarsFanFavourite Twitter poll. The misogynistic trolling of Heard was incessant and exhausting. But the Hollywood studios (if not the Oscars) have learnt that noise on social media, however deafening, rarely translates into genuine popular support. What matters to the accountants is that only a trickle of punters actually paid to see Minamata in countries where it achieved a release. The studios will certainly not be moved by the hilarious petition to replace Heard in Aquaman with Depp’s lawyer Camille Vasquez.
Nonetheless, it seems that the case has had a more deleterious effect on Heard’s still-developing career than it has had on Depp’s long-established reputation. The Los Angeles Times noted a survey by Spotted Media that reported more than 86 per cent of respondents feeling “Johnny Depp should not be dropped from future productions”. More than half those polled felt they were “less interested in seeing the actress in future films”. This was before the result of the trial.
Despite all this, Heard will retain support from many in Hollywood. Amy Schumer posted a loaded quote from Gloria Steinem on Instagram. “Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke,” it read. “She will need her sisterhood.”
Will such solidarity keep Heard’s career aloft? As Zhou Enlai didn’t exactly say about the French Revolution, it is “too early to tell”. We learn this morning that Heard is to appeal. This could outlast even the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.
