French music icon Mylène Farmer is bringing her distinctive musical style to Ti West’s Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol, writing and performing an original song for the upcoming Johnny Depp film.
Paramount Pictures France confirmed the collaboration on October 21, announcing that Farmer has recorded a new track for the dark adaptation of Charles Dickens’ holiday classic.
Farmer is one of France’s most successful recording artists, known for her distinctive voice and often dark, theatrical approach to pop music. Her involvement is an intriguing fit for West, the filmmaker behind the MaXXXine trilogy. His latest project takes Dickens’ familiar Christmas ghost story into gothic territory, with Depp playing the miser whose Christmas Eve encounter with the supernatural forces him to reconsider his life.
According to French outlet Le Parisien, Farmer has already recorded the song. French entertainment publication AlloCiné reports that she will write and perform the French end-credits song for the film. It is not yet clear whether the track will also appear in the American release.
The film features an ensemble cast led by Johnny Depp as Ebenezer Scrooge. Ian McKellen plays Jacob Marley, the dead business partner whose visit sets the story in motion, while Rupert Grint portrays Bob Cratchit. Daisy Ridley and Sam Claflin also appear in the film, directed by West from a screenplay by Nathaniel Halpern.
There is an interesting difference in how Paramount is presenting the film to audiences on either side of the Atlantic. In the United States, the movie is titled Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol, with Ebenezer serving as its shorter title. In France, it is being released simply as Scrooge, the name most audiences already associate with Dickens’ miser.
That choice raises a marketing question. If the intention is to introduce a fresh take on a story that has been adapted countless times, Ebenezer gives the film a chance to present its central character as someone audiences might see differently. Scrooge immediately brings the familiar story to mind, potentially making the movie sound like another straightforward adaptation before viewers have seen a frame of it. The French title is certainly recognizable, but it does less to distinguish West’s version from the many films that came before it.
The French trailer offers another look at the film under that title, with McKellen’s Marley and the supernatural encounters that confront Scrooge taking prominent roles. The movie is scheduled to open in French theaters on November 11, two days before its November 13 release in the United States.
Farmer’s involvement gives the French release its own musical talking point. Whether the song will be heard outside French-language screenings remains to be seen, but pairing one of France’s best-known pop artists with West’s gothic take on Dickens is an unexpected combination that makes sense once you consider the material.
