Johnny Depp signed a golden contract with Dior

2023-05-15 17:38:00

After his legal disputes, the actor emerges from purgatory: he returns in force to the Cannes Film Festival and has just won the advertising jackpot.

Par Marc Fourny

After a long crossing of the desert, Johnny Depp will continue to work with Dior, with a juicy contract at stake.
© STEVE HELBER / POOL / AFP

Published on 05/15/2023 at 5:38 p.m.

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TOuched but not sunk: Johnny Depp is back in force after his legal disputes with Amber Heard, which made headlines for several weeks in the spring of 2022. According to Varietythe actor recovered his financial health by signing a new three-year contract with Dior in the summer of 2022 for 20 million dollars – this is the famous campaign for the perfume “Eau sauvage” where we sees Depp go in search of inspiration in the middle of the desert… An agreement that eclipses by far the one at 12 million dollars concluded with Robert Pattinson for the same house or even the pact at 7 million from Brad Pitt to promote “Chanel N°5” , remind our colleagues.

Depp has been lending his image to Dior since 2015 and his head-on fight with Amber Heard, amid accusations of domestic violence, could have stopped any collaboration. But his victory in his last trial for defamation ended up partly restoring his image. And far from being bad for sales, the buzz was beneficial: searches on social networks around the perfume brand increased by 50% over the period, according to the specialized magazine. WWD. “Eau sauvage” has thus become one of the most popular perfumes in the world with a bottle sold every three seconds… We can better understand the 8-figure contract.

Financial setbacks

A hell of a fortune that allows the actor to replenish his coffers after a dizzying descent into hell: in addition to the armada of lawyers that had to be hired for his various trials, Johnny Depp is known for an expensive lifestyle that has ended up largely denting his colossal fortune amassed throughout his immense career – 650 million dollars according to his own words. All the same, he still has several real estate assets – including a superb Provençal hamlet in Plan-de-la-Tour estimated at 46 million euros – and some unsuspected resources, such as these sales of screen prints created around Hollywood icons which have already brought in more than 8 million euros over the past two years.

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While Hollywood had already buried him, here he is indulging in the luxury of coming back in force on the Cannes red carpet, in Maïwenn’s film, Jeanne du Barry. Before tackling the production of his own feature film on the artist Modigliani, a biopic which is already causing a lot of talk where we will find the Frenchman Pierre Niney alongside Al Pacino and Riccardo Scamarcio – filming will begin at autumn in Budapest, Hungary.

Will we see him one day on the poster of an American blockbuster? For the moment, Hollywood has turned its back on him, he has notably been excluded from the saga Fantastic Beasts and no project is announced. But we know that the director Jerry Bruckheimer, enticed by the incredible success of Top Gun Maverickwants to relaunch the franchise of Pirates of the Caribbean. Projects are being written and even if Brukheimer has denied any presence of Depp for the moment, he has not closed the door to this possibility. “The future of the saga is under study, nothing is decided,” he confided last year to the Sunday Times. But the highly publicized return of the actor to Cannes could change the situation…