Wrestling legend and film star Dwayne Johnson has spoken out on the shooting tragedy on the set of Alec Baldwin’s currently-in-production film Rust.
Dwayne Johnson On the Changes Required for Greater Film Set Safety
Johnson—who co-founded production studio Seven Bucks Production—usually floats in the action end of films where guns, explosives, and violence are pretty much the bread and butter on screen.
During a red carpet premiere of his Seven Bucks’ co-produced feature Red Notice, Variety asked Dwayne Johnson for his take on the death of Halyna Hutchins during the filming of Rust.
Upon hearing about the tragedy, Dwayne Johnson said that he was speaking with his company about changes that needed to be made and steps that would be necessary:
“But accidents do happen. And when something like this happens of this magnitude, [that is] this heartbreaking, I think the most prudent thing and the smartest thing to do is just pause for a second and really re-examine how you’re going to move forward and how we’re going to work together.”
Seven Bucks Is Done With Real Guns
Johnson further punctuated this by saying that Seven Bucks will no longer use real guns on its own sets:
“We’re going to switch over to rubber guns, and we’re going to take care of it in post. We’re not going to worry about the dollars; we won’t worry about what it costs.”
He went further than that by saying that any project that he’s involved in will be required to use plastic guns.
Implications on the Industry
The main implication is that real guns with live rounds could be phased out pretty quickly. Well, as quickly as it can be anyway. Dangerous incidents aren’t anything new on film sets but ones resulting in death are definitely rare.
Even rarer than that are ones involving gun misfires or live rounds. A prime example would be the death of Brandon Lee on the set of The Crow in 1993 while a more recent example would be the 2014 death of an audio tech and the suspect on an Omaha episode of Cops.
It’s expected that studios will improve safety on set, something Shannon Lee—the sister of Brandon Lee and daughter of Bruce Lee—has pushed for decades now. Of course, actors and stunt actors have the greatest power in this issue.
Being the main draws for any film, an actor’s willingness to perform on a set that meets their safety requirements. Also, stuntmen and stunt women’s comfort with certain stunts could go beyond just whether there is a real gun with live rounds on set.
Losing access to big names would hurt studios’ box office drawing power for a project. That hurts earnings and with budgets becoming larger for blockbuster films, that’s something that studios would want to avoid.
Red Notice is an action-comedy that stars Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot, and Ryan Reynolds. It debuts on November 5 on Netflix.
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