A shooting accident killed ‘The Crow’ star Brandon Lee on set in 1994. Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins died in a similar way after Alec Baldwin accidentally fired a prop gun during the ‘Rust’ production in October 2021.
Director Rupert Sanders decided to ban real guns on the set of ‘The Crow’ reboot to prevent another incident like these. “Safety is a number one priority,” he recently told Variety. “Film sets are very dangerous. There are fast moving cars with cranes stuck on the top. There are stunt guys falling on high wires down steps. Even just walking around a set at night with rain machines and lights — you’re working in an industrial environment. So, it’s dangerous. You have to be safe.”
The director recalled, “The first day I met with the special effects department and the armorer, who was great, in Prague. They were very safety-conscious. They follow all the same guidelines as the military when dealing with weapons, but I didn’t even want to risk that.”
“So, I said, categorically, ‘We will have no firing weapons on set,’ which means we didn’t have one gun that could have had a live round or a blank round anywhere near it ever, so that no projectile could go in,” he explained. “They’re all Airsoft guns, and some of them are just rubber or metal decoys that are functional but have no firing mechanism.”
The ‘Rust’ shooting that killed Halyna Hutchins also left director Joel Souza physically and mentally injured. Souza managed to complete the film in Hutchins’ memory but shared in a recent interview with Vanity Fair that the incident had a lasting impact on him.
“When I tell someone it ruined me, I don’t mean in the sense that people might generally think,” he shared. “I don’t mean that it put my career in ruins. I mean, internally, the person I was just went away. That stopped.”
Many actors and directors pledged to stop using real guns on set after the ‘Rust’ accident. Dwayne Johnson announced in November 2021 that all productions under his Seven Bucks Productions banner would switch to rubber guns despite the cost.
