Johnny Depp is the swashbuckling star they couldn't cancel! Eight years after Disney dropped him following his vicious split with Amber Heard, the world suddenly can't get enough, finds ALISON BOSHOFF

He once said he wouldn't play the character of Jack Sparrow again 'even for $300 million and a million alpacas'.

Seemingly, nothing could tempt Johnny Depp back to his famous role, so stung was he after being dumped by Disney bosses following the notorious wife-beating allegations against him.

Indeed, Depp had been mid-negotiation for his next iteration of Captain Jack in 2018 when the fallout from his divorce from actress Amber Heard began to escalate, eventually resulting in two court trials – and the studio acted rapidly to sever ties.

His manager said later that Depp could have made $22.5 million if the deal had gone through.

For years, an enraged Depp wasn't interested in ever working for Disney again, or even making a studio film.

'They blind dropped him even though he was telling the truth,' a friend of his told me bitterly three years ago, adding: 'He says he isn't interested in speaking someone else's words. He is interested in authentic expression of himself, through art and music at the moment. He's got no interest in Hollywood at all.'

Now, though, eight years on from the allegations which looked to have finished him, there has been an extraordinary turnaround.

Not only is Depp being cast again as a studio leading man, returning to the career which brought him vast financial rewards, it looks like he is set to don his famous red bandana, and bring back family favourite Captain Jack in the next Pirates of the Caribbean film.

Disney is clear it wants him. Pirates producer Jerry Bruckheimer says: 'We're talking with Johnny, we're working on a screenplay, and hopefully we can get this done.'

The part looks set to be smaller than his previous turns and, while there isn't a green light yet because the script is still being rewritten, shooting may begin in 2027.

Depp is also taking the lead in Paramount Pictures' big pre-Christmas release, Ebenezer, telling the story of Charles Dickens' Scrooge – for which he'll soon be doing promotional activities. Plus the lead in a thriller, Day Drinker, for Lionsgate, in March next year.

Clearly, then, there's been a change of heart on both his side, and among Hollywood bigwigs.

The latter can almost certainly be explained by the fact that, put simply, Depp is the man the world couldn't cancel.

The grimness of the details revealed in those two highly publicised trials arising from allegations of domestic abuse towards Heard – among the ugliest were the text messages with actor pal Paul Bettany in which Depp said: 'Let's burn Amber!!!' adding: 'Let's drown her before we burn her!!! I will f*** her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she's dead' – appears to have been forgotten.

At 63, he's no longer a beautiful young man with razor cheekbones, but he still gets attention as if he were a boybander in his prime.

He toured with the group Hollywood Vampires this summer – he plays guitar, Alice Cooper sings – and across Poland, Germany, Italy and the UK screaming fans lined the streets outside venues.

On stage he tends to thank the faithful by pressing his palm to his heart and they roar for him.

Research proves this: cinema-goers now actively want to see films starring Depp, meaning that the gambles taken by Lionsgate and Paramount look less risky.

Polling by the National Research Group, a film industry consultancy, suggests he remains a powerful draw. In the firm's most recent global moviegoer survey, released in April, respondents ranked Depp seventh among stars they said would make them 'most interested in seeing a new movie in a cinema in the future'.

Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio were in the top three spots. Below Depp were Tom Hanks, Keanu Reeves and Scarlett Johansson.

Also, Depp's 'Q score' – a measurement of a star's likeability – has increased lately.

In 2015, before Heard's accusations, 36 per cent of adults surveyed by the Q Scores Company viewed him positively. That number fell to 24 per cent in 2023. By early this year, it was back up to 27 per cent.

Test screenings of Ebenezer have also shown strong approval for Depp's return, with insiders reporting that 80 per cent of the audience rated it 'excellent' or 'very good'.

More importantly the test audience loved him: 86 per cent of the audience gave him the top rating for a lead character, notably higher than the usual score of around 67 per cent. Women aged over 35 rated the film most favourably. That's striking as it's the very demographic whom you might expect to recoil from Depp. But they do not.

That view appears confirmed by scenes at CinemaCon in Las Vegas in April where his surprise appearance to promote Ebenezer was greeted with giddy delight.

'We love you Johnny,' shouted some in the crowd. One woman called out: 'Have my baby!'

Miranda Banks, a professor of film, television and media studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, commented: 'I do see a path for him, particularly because Hollywood needs this comeback. There's an incredible lack of compelling A-listers who can open movies on a worldwide basis.'

His popularity is also proven by his ventures outside of acting.

His Three Hearts rum brand, which he launched this year, is apparently a great success.

His paintings and drawings – he has an exhibition in London which started this week at the Halcyon Gallery – also sell briskly, at very high prices.

And he remains an ambassador for Dior's best-selling aftershave, Sauvage. I'm told sales of the fragrance actually soared by 50 per cent over the course of his 2022 trial.

It's clear, then, why the studios want him back: he is box office.

Heard, though, has never recovered from a trashing of her reputation on the internet (which continues to this day, with endless posts, many by bots, on X).

While the High Court in London dismissed Depp's claims that he had been libelled by being called a 'wife beater' in 2020 and found that he had assaulted Heard and left her in fear of her life, a court in Virginia two years later found largely in Depp's favour.

She has since, aged 40, retreated from view, and is living in Madrid with three children, born with the help of a surrogate, as a single mum.

One local source says she also maintains a holiday home on the island of Mallorca and is so determined to fly under the radar there that she goes by an assumed name.

Meanwhile, locals where Depp lives in Wadhurst, Sussex, see him only occasionally walking his bullmastiff, Bourbon, across the fields behind his 44-room house. He cuts a distinctive figure to say the least.

He lives in the listed manor house – which he refers to as his 'castle' – with a travelling entourage of staff who keep him company.

Socially, he is very quiet and no girlfriend has appeared in tow. He was recently spotted having dinner in the Middle House hotel, in Mayfield, with Sandra Beck, the widow of his close friend, guitarist Jeff Beck (the men were unlikely best friends, and Depp misses him greatly).

He maintains his rather 'intellectual' pose. Even now, I hear privately, he regards himself as an artist first, a guitarist second and, in a poor third place, an actor.

Indeed, Depp himself said in Cannes in 2023 – which he attended to promote his role in art house movie Jeanne du Barry – that he wasn't going to scrabble around for anyone's approval.

'It's almost like I need to comeback and do a tap dance and dance my best for you guys, and hope you approve,' he said. 'The notion of that is some kind of bizarre mystery.'

And yet here he is, getting ready to tap dance once more. Why? The answer is simple: the large cheque needed to sustain his lifestyle.

He has no fewer than four homes: the 'castle' in England (which is rented), a large home in LA and an estate in France which is essentially a small private village, plus the Caribbean island of Little Hall Pond Cay.

Modelling himself on heroes and friends such as Rolling Stone Keith Richards and the late writer Hunter S Thompson, Depp has long embraced a quixotic lifestyle in which spending money wildly seemed a point of pride. He told a magazine in 2018: 'It's insulting to say that I spent $30,000 on wine, because it was far more.' He also said he spent more than $5 million to get Hunter S Thompson's ashes shot out of a cannon.

His famously large recompense for the Pirates film, which included a slice of the profits,

is said to have made him around £240 million to date. But as Depp explained when in the High Court in London in 2020, he discovered in 2016 that he had 'lost' a fortune of $750 million (around £500million).

During a meeting with his advisers at business management group TMG, he was told that all the money he had made from the Pirates films was gone and that he was '$100 million in the hole' because he had not paid his taxes for 17 years.

'It was a bad meeting,' he later said with some understatement.

Joel and Robert Mandel of TMG looked after his business affairs from 1999 to 2016. Depp then sued them, claiming $25million (£20million) for gross misconduct, including $5.6 million (£5 million) in late fees on taxes.

TMG said that he was repeatedly warned about looming financial disaster but just ignored them. They counter sued in 2017, calling him 'a spoiled brat with no impulse control' and said he was a compulsive spender.

'Depp listened to no one… [and] demanded they fund a lifestyle that was extravagant and extreme,' they said, before adding: 'When Depp's spending outpaced his earnings, and he refused to change his lifestyle, he was forced to borrow large sums of money to continue living the lifestyle he chose.'

The lawsuit was settled in mediation.

Depp settled another lawsuit with his personal lawyer Jake Bloom – once a father figure to him – who he claimed had improperly collected more than £23 million from him.

Bloom, who'd made Depp rich thanks to a profits deal he crafted for the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, counter-sued.

A judge ruled partially in Depp's favour, saying an oral agreement that they had about fees should have been put in writing.

Some estimates reckon Depp has spent up to £50 million on lawyers, all in all.

Some cutbacks have taken place: he sold his Kentucky equestrian estate and five penthouse apartments in LA, while his estate in France – where he and then partner Vanessa Paradis raised their children Jack and Lily Rose – comes on and off the market for prices around the £40 million mark but has yet to sell.

One source linked to the Depp camp tells me: 'He never considers the cost of anything.' But even so, a big payday which comes with a dose of adulation must be hard to resist.

Depp once told an interviewer: 'Deep down, I'm like an old watch that refuses to be set to the right time. I like to go at my own pace, and not always in the same direction as everyone else.'

But just for now, it seems that direction aligns with the world of Hollywood which he was once so glad to reject.