Movie production company Planeless Pictures claims the YouTube star torpedoed a movie deal he had signed with the company and cost them millions of dollars by posting the Japanese forest video.
- Dec 30, 2020
AceShowbiz - Years after posting the shocking suicide forest video, Logan Paul is still dealing with the repercussion of his bad decision at the time. The YouTube star is now sued by a production company which claims that he jeopardized a movie he was signed to star in following the controversy.
In a lawsuit obtained by TMZ, Planeless Pictures reveals that Logan inked a $3 million deal with the company in 2016 to star as a fictionalized version of himself called "Airplane Mode", in a movie that was developed as a spoof on modern-day trend-setters, like Logan himself, his brother Jake Paul and other social media stars.
Logan additionally was set to write and help produce the flick, and he even agreed to help get other influencers, such as his brother Jake, Juanpa Zureta, Nick Bateman and Amanda Cerny, onboard the film. The plan was to distribute the film through those influencers' YouTube channels and other social media platforms as a new and revolutionary way to market and monetize the film.
However, the deal was completely destroyed after Logan posted the Japanese forest video in 2017, which landed him in hot water. The controversial video captured the then-recently deceased corpse of a man who had died by hanging himself in Aokigahara at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan, known as the "suicide forest" due to its infamy as a suicide site.
Planeless Pictures alleges that Logan deliberately posted the suicide forest video knowing it would jeopardize the movie project. The company says at the result of it, Google ended their contract and left them $3 million in debt, which Planeless claims Logan owes them.
The 25-year-old vlogger posted an apology after the video gained a lot of negative feedback. "Let me start with this - I'm sorry," he wrote on Twitter at the time. "I'm surrounded by good people and believe I make good decisions, but I'm still a human being. I can be wrong."
"I didn't do it for views. I get views. I did it because I thought I could make a positive ripple on the internet, not cause a monsoon of negativity," so he explained. "I intended to raise awareness for suicide and suicide prevention and while I thought 'if this video saves just ONE life, it'll be worth it,' I was misguided by shock and awe, as portrayed in the video."
