The Professor (alternatively titled Richard Says Goodbye) is a 2018 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Wayne Roberts.

The film stars Johnny Depp, Rosemarie DeWitt, Danny Huston, Zoey Deutch, Ron Livingston, Odessa Young and Paloma Kwiatkowski.

Richard Brown, an English professor at a New England college, is in the office of his doctor and is told that he has advanced stage 4 cancer of his lungs, which has spread throughout his body and is terminal.

Richard likes this and gives his final words (and grades) to his students, he stresses the importance of seizing one's own existence, acknowledging the fact that we are all going to die, and appreciating the (little) time we have left.

In the final scene, Richard comes across a fork in the road but decides to take neither and creates an alternative, driving on across a field into the night, with his dog by his side.

[3] The rest of the main cast was announced on July 25, 2017, which included Danny Huston, Rosemarie DeWitt, Devon Terrell, and Odessa Young.

[10] Guy Lodge, wrote in 2018 a Variety Magazine article mentioning how inappropiate Johnny Depp seemed as a choice for the main character considering he was facing abuse allegations, Lodge also considered that the film had a misogynist tone and mentioned American Beauty as possible inspiration for the film.

[11] Ben Keningsberg wrote in a 2019 New York Times article that the depiction of cancer was "tired (at best)", he claimed that the Film was plagued with worn-out screenwriting devices.

The website's critics consensus reads, "A muddled story populated with thinly written characters and arranged around a misguided Johnny Depp performance, The Professor fails early and often.

"[12] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 37 out of 100 based on 12 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".

[13] Nick Allen of RogerEbert.com gave the film 2 out of 4,[14] while John DeFore of The Hollywood Reporter said that "more an intriguing literary conceit than a credible drama".