Logan Paul is making a documentary about how dang hard this year has been for him

Welcome to Development Hell, the fiery pit into which we fling recent developments in casting, distribution, and everything else that’s new and mildly interesting in the Boschian phantasmagoria of the entertainment industry.

We’ll be honest: Some days down here in Development Hell are hotter than others. Days where the news is not, to put none-too-fine a point on it, good. Days when we’re forced to really come to terms with the depths of what our roles as entertainment journalists force us to think about on a regular basis. Today is one of those days.

• Which is all to say, Logan Paul has announced he’s making a comeback of sorts, posting a video today explaining that he’s gearing up to make a new documentary about how hard his life has gotten this year, ever since he saw a dead body in a Japanese “suicide forest,” and then had to wrestle, not just with the barest dim flickerings of his own mortality, but also with the baffling fact that people didn’t like the way he mined another human being’s death in the name of content. Paul—who’s also preparing for a YouTube celebrity boxing match alongside his brother, Jake, because the wheels never stop turning—says he intends to put an inspirational spin on the whole story, presumably focusing less on the “getting de-monetized by YouTube” and “tase-ing dead rats” side of his recent life story, and more on his upbringing and the way he brings out the best in America’s kids. [via The Verge]
• Another hurdle in the upcoming sale of The Weinstein Co. has now been cleared, with the film studio’s various creditors okay-ing an increase in the company’s sale price in order to cover some of the cash owed to them. Lantern Capital is currently in ongoing efforts to purchase the disgraced company, although recent troubles with the deal threatened to send TWC into liquidation. [via Variety]
• Patriot Releasing has acquired and set a release date for the Vivica A. Fox-starring sex drama Kinky, presumably as one of the 10 movies per year that it’s promised to target toward black women as their primary audience. Directed by Jean-Claude La Marre—whose other credits include Chocolate City, a Magic Mike riff focused on black men—the latest film sounds a little bit 50 Shades, with Fox starring as “a beautiful African American surgeon who begins a sexual journey with a billionaire investor. After a few months of dating, the couple begins exploring their most kinky sexual fantasies, leading them into a world of BDSM and hardcore sexual exploration.” Fun!
• Per Slashfilm, we now have our first (somewhat blurry) glimpse at the character designs for the upcoming, anime-influenced Star Wars animated series, Resistance. From the same creator as the popular Star Wars: Rebels, the series will focus on pilots and dogfighting, and will reportedly take place prior to The Force Awakens. (Oscar Isaac is set to occasionally reprise his role as Poe Dameron.)

• Joe Johnston—whose credits include Captain America: The First Avenger and The Rocketeer—has stepped in as co-director on Disney’s live-action The Nutcracker And The Four Realms. According to Deadline, Johnston was invited onto the project by original director Lasse Hallström, after it became clear that Hallström wouldn’t be available to handle requested reshoots on the film.
• Judi Dench and Eddie Izzard are about to be Nazi-adjacent, as production starts on the 1930s period thriller Six Minutes To Midnight. Set in 1939, the film is about a teacher working in southern England, who comes to the unsettling realization that several of her students are the children of high-ranking Nazis. [via Variety]
• BBC Two has picked up an adaptation of Dr. Adam Kay’s recently published comedy medical diary, This Is Going To Hurt. Penned in his rare off-hours while working 97-hour weeks in a labor ward, Kay’s book has been a bestseller since its publication last September. (Also, descriptions of it include the phrase “the constant tsunami of bodily fluids,” which should be something to look forward to.) The book is being adapted into an eight-part miniseries. [via Deadline]