Did Ebenezer have a good reason to keep Bob Cratchit overworked and underpaid?

Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol will offer a “good argument” as to why the character of Scrooge (played by Johnny Depp) is such a heartless miser, he tells Entertainment Weekly.

West, who is directing Ebenezer for a Thanksgiving release, explained in an interview that he and screenwriter Nathaniel Halpern wanted the audience to see Scrooge’s point of view, and maybe even agree with him.

“In other adaptations, Scrooge is kind of an asshole, and then the rest of the characters are benevolent, perfect people. And it was really our goal to try to balance that out to say that there’s much more of a gray area in the story,” said West. “We want to give Scrooge logic and a good argument, so when he is making an argument about something, he’s not wrong.”

West, who directed the hit horror trilogy X, Pearl, and Maxxxine, told the magazine that Depp played the character to elicit audience sympathy.  “As his Scrooge cuts someone down verbally or as he makes a financial point or withdraws, you do understand why he’s doing it. You kind of agree with him even though you shouldn’t. That’s, I think, what makes this special. You find yourself liking a character that you’re not supposed to on paper, which then brings you as the audience into the movie more because you’re experiencing the movie subjectively as he is, rather than just seeing it as a play,” he said.

West didn’t say why his version of Scrooge doesn’t seem to care if Tiny Tim lives or dies (until some ghosts show him how much of a jerk he’s being), but he did tell EW that both he and Depp were big fans of the story, written by Charles Dickens and first published in 1843.

“I used to read it every year, and when I was a kid, I liked it more as a ghost story than as a Christmas story because when I was young, I saw the George C. Scott TV movie and Marley really freaked me out. It was one of the earlier horror-adjacent things I had seen,” he said.

West, of course, is known for his horror offerings, and tells the magazine that he decided to make the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, along with Jacob Marley, extra terrifying.

“I’ve always thought no one’s really made the movie version where the ghosts are a little bit spooky,” he said.

Sir Ian McKellen will play Jacob Marley and Rupert Grint will play Bob Cratchit. Sam Claflin, Daisy Ridley, Andrea Riseborough, Tramell Tillman, and Robert Strange also star.

Ebenezer will start haunting theaters on November 13th.