A full moon, a growl on the soundtrack, and a pair of eyes that do not track the way human eyes track. That is what the first teaser for Day Drinker hands over, and it never once says out loud what Johnny Depp is actually playing. Lionsgate opens the film March 26, 2027.
Depp plays Kelly, a passenger on a private yacht who falls in with the bartender, Lorna (Madelyn Cline). Penélope Cruz is Cara Lazaro, the criminal the two of them end up roped to. Marc Webb directs from a script by Zach Dean, with Manu Ríos, Arón Piper and Juan Diego Botto filling out the boat.
A Werewolf, a Vampire, or Just a Drunk
The cut moves fast and it moves ugly: guns, an axe, blood on a white deck, and Kelly walking through all of it with the composure of a man who has done this before. Someone floats the possibility that this is a ghost story. Nobody in the footage confirms or denies it, and the closing line gives Depp the room to promise he is done when he says he is done.
The accent is the swing worth arguing about. It sits somewhere between Irish and no country on any map, and it is doing as much work as the grey hair and the ruined beard. It will either be the best thing in the picture or the only thing anybody talks about on the way out.
The Crew Is a Horror Crew
Webb came up on (500) Days of Summer and two Amazing Spider-Man pictures, so the genre credentials on this one sit behind the camera rather than in the chair. Javier Aguirresarobe shot it, the cinematographer who lit The Others for Alejandro Amenábar and the 2015 Poltergeist for Gil Kenan. Kevin Greutert is one of the two editors, and Greutert cut the first five Saw films before directing Saw VI, Saw 3D and Saw X.
Thunder Road Films is producing, which is Basil Iwanyk’s shop and the reason the teaser’s fight beats carry an unmistakable John Wick rhythm. Depp’s own Infinitum Nihil is in on it as well, alongside Spain’s Nostromo Pictures.
His Second Supernatural Job in a Row
This is not a one-off detour into the dark for him either. Ti West has Depp playing Scrooge in Ebenezer, a Christmas Carol that remembers the book is a ghost story. Two supernatural pictures back to back, after years away from studio scale, reads as a deliberate lane change.
Day Drinker shot in Spain, a good deal of it on Tenerife, and wrapped in October 2025. Lionsgate has had a finished film in hand for close to a year now and still will not put it out until March 26, 2027. Whatever Kelly turns out to be, the studio is in no hurry at all to tell anyone.
