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Johnny Depp and his controversies have created a lot of baggage that seems to be dragging his career down into the dirt.

He has had to defend himself from accusations of physical and verbal abuse towards his ex-wife Amber Heard, all while fighting off a libel case against British tabloid The Sun, who referred to him as a  “wife-beater” in an article.

Depp lost this libel case, and then Warner Bros asked him to resign the role of Grindelwald in the Harry Potter spinoff franchise, Fantastic Beasts.

Additionally, his latest film, Minamata, has not yet been released in the US, which director Andrew Levitas claims is a decision to “bury” the film because of the personal baggage of Depp, per Deadline.

The film lays bare the horrendous neglect that the Chisso Corporation displayed in a Japanese coastal city “where locals were ravaged by mercury poisoning from chemicals dumped into the waters by a factory, which spread to the local population” through the ingestion of fish.

Depp plays Eugene Smith, a talented photojournalist who is on a self-destruction mission but takes a final assignment from his magazine editor (Bill Nighy) to expose the story to the rest of the world.

Here’s the trailer:

Per The Hollywood Reporter, Depp discussed the film and the “surreal five years” he has experienced during his fallout from the Hollywood community.

He referred to his feelings of being boycotted by the film industry as an “absurdity of media mathematics” among other things:

The 58-year-old actor also addressed his standing in the film industry, saying, “Some films touch people and this affects those in Minamata and people who experience similar things. And for anything … for Hollywood’s boycott of me? One man, one actor in an unpleasant and messy situation, over the last number of years?”

Depp noted that he is “moving towards where I need to go to make all that … to bring things to light.”

Minamata’s director also sent a letter of complaint to MGM and others to protest the delay in the release of the movie, believing that the studio is not giving strong enough consideration to the importance of the subject matter in the film.

While some in the film industry are still open to supporting Depp and his “outstanding contributions to the film world”, it’s clearly not a sentiment shared by all.

[sources:hollywoodreporter&deadline]