So, let me get this straight. Paramount is in one room greenlighting a massive, high-concept Johnny Depp comeback vehicle—a gothic, Ti West-directed Christmas Carol adaptation, no less—and in the room next door, some lawyer in a bad suit is firing off cease-and-desist letters to a pizza joint in New Jersey.
This isn't just a tale of two cities. This is a tale of a corporate brain with a severe case of schizophrenia. On one hand, you have the grand, billion-dollar chess game of Hollywood rehabilitation and IP mining. On the other, you have a street-level turf war over a logo that riffs on a 50-year-old movie.
And we're supposed to see this as a coherent strategy for a media giant trying to compete with Netflix and Disney Plus? Give me a break.
A Ghost of Hollywood Past, Present, and Future
Let's talk about the big, shiny object first: Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol starring Johnny Depp. I mean, the optics alone are something to behold. Depp, a guy who basically became a walking ghost in Hollywood for a few years, is now set to play a man haunted by literal ghosts. The irony is so thick you could cut it with a knife. This is his second "big" studio project after his public trial, and it feels less like a comeback and more like a carefully managed re-entry program. Johnny Depp to Star in ‘A Christmas Carol,’ Paramount in Negotiations for Ti West Adaptation
The script is described as a "thrilling ghost story" about a man's "supernatural journey to face his past, present and future and fight for a second chance." It's a logline for Scrooge, but it's also a PR statement for Depp. It’s perfect. No, ‘perfect’ doesn’t cover it—it’s so cynically on-the-nose it’s a work of art. You can just picture the marketing meetings, the executives nodding sagely about "redemptive arcs" and "synergy."
And they've attached Ti West to direct? The guy behind X and Pearl? That’s the one part of this that actually piques my interest. West doesn't do sentimental. He does dread. He does slow-burn, atmospheric horror that usually ends with someone getting an axe to the face. So what is this movie? Is it a prestige holiday picture, or is it going to be a genuinely terrifying ghost story where Marley’s ghost drags his chains through Scrooge’s entrails? I honestly don't know, and that ambiguity is probably the only thing that makes this project anything more than a glorified PR stunt.
But the real question is, does anyone actually want another version of A Christmas Carol? We've had the Muppets version, the Bill Murray version, the Jim Carrey CGI-nightmare version... the story has been bled drier than a mummy's tear ducts. Is slapping Johnny Depp's face on it and adding a horror director enough to get people to sign up for a Paramount Plus subscription? Or is this just a way for the studio to hedge its bets with a controversial star by wrapping him in the coziest, most familiar Christmas blanket they could find?
Meanwhile, In New Jersey...
While Paramount’s movie division is busy trying to resurrect careers and classic literature, its legal department is apparently focused on a much smaller target: The Doughfather Pizzeria and Ristorante.
You can't make this stuff up. A local pizza place in Monroe Township, owned by a guy named Massimo D’Amico, gets a threatening letter from a multi-billion-dollar corporation because its logo—which features a hand with puppet strings—looks too much like The Godfather's. Their tagline is "pizza you can't refuse." It's a dad joke, a harmless pun. It ain't a federal crime. Pizzeria in N.J. threatened by Paramount for ripping off the Godfather design
Paramount's letter is a masterpiece of corporate legalese, citing trademark infringement and the risk of "consumer confusion." Consumer confusion? Are they serious? Do they really think someone is going to walk into a New Jersey pizzeria, see the logo, and think, "Ah yes, this must be the officially licensed Francis Ford Coppola pizzeria I've been looking for. I’ll have a large pepperoni and a Blu-ray of The Godfather Part III." It's absurd.
This is what I call the Battleship Fallacy. Paramount is a giant media battleship, trying to navigate the treacherous waters of streaming wars against Hulu, Max, and Prime Video. They're launching huge, expensive torpedoes like this Depp movie. But then the captain sees a little rubber duck floating in the harbor—a pizza shop logo—and orders a full broadside, wasting ammo and looking like a complete bully in the process. D'Amico, the owner, said he thought the letter was a joke. Offcourse he did. Any sane person would.
He’s already agreed to change the logo, swapping the puppet strings for a hand tossing salt or giving a thumbs-up. The little guy folded immediately, because what else is he going to do, take Paramount to court? The whole episode is just... sad. It's a stark reminder that for all the talk of artistry and storytelling in Hollywood, these companies are machines. And sometimes, the machine's gears grind down on the smallest, most insignificant things for no reason other than because they can. It just leaves a bad taste in your mouth. And it sure as hell doesn't make me want to watch their paramount shows.
So This Is The Paramount Playbook?
One minute you're a creative powerhouse taking a "risk" on a polarizing star in a moody horror adaptation of a classic. The next, you're the corporate hall monitor shaking down a small business owner for a pizza pun. This isn't a strategy; it's a corporate identity crisis playing out in public. It tells me everything I need to know about where their priorities really lie: protect the past at all costs, even if it makes you look ridiculous, while you desperately throw money at the future and hope something sticks. Good luck with that.
