Since Depp prevailed in a contentious defamation case against his ex-wife Amber Heard, the inclusion of Mawenn’s “Jeanne du Barry” marks the first time the film industry has publicly embraced him. The Cannes Picture Festival will open in May with a costume drama starring Johnny Depp as King Louis XV of France, the festival said on Wednesday.
This will be Depp’s first significant picture since prevailing in a scandalous and contentious defamation trial last year. Shortly after the trial, in which the jury determined that Depp’s ex-wife Amber Heard had defamed him by referring to herself in a 2018 op-ed in The Washington Post as a “public figure representing domestic abuse,” Depp began filming the historical drama “Jeanne du Barry.”
He and Heard sparred during their six weeks of testimony, which captivated the nation, over her claims that he had sexually and physically mistreated her. Heard initially filed an appeal following the judgment but then declared her intention to resolve the case.
Since Johnny Depp’s victory in court, he has cautiously reentered the public glare, making appearances at the MTV Video Music Awards and a fashion show supported by Rihanna. He has also launched a TikTok account.
But since the trial, in which he refuted Heard’s claims of physical and sexual abuse and attempted to paint her as the aggressor in the relationship, the actor hasn’t been publicly embraced by the film industry until the Cannes premiere.
The working-class woman and courtesan in “Jeanne du Barry,” played by French actress and director Mawenn, who also serves as the film’s director, is the king’s favorite. In 2011, Mawenn’s movie “Polisse” took home the Jury Prize at Cannes.
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After the festival’s opening ceremony on May 16, her new movie will have its premiere, and the following day, it will be released in French theaters. Only in France will Netflix stream the movie on their service fifteen months after its theatrical debut.
In addition, Depp, 59, contested a small portion of the jury’s verdict in the defamation case, wherein they found him accountable for a defamatory statement his lawyer had made regarding Amber Heard. Heard agreed to pay $1 million to conclude the case.
According to His Attorneys, which is far less than what the Virginia jury had previously demanded she pays. Some legal experts were taken aback by his triumph in the trial because, in a previous case, a British judge had determined that there was proof Depp had physically abused Heard.
The British court’s decision stemmed from a libel claim that Depp launched after a tabloid newspaper, The Sun, referred to him as a “wife beater” in a headline. The defendants had established that what they had written was “substantially true,” according to the judge in that case.