Dwayne Johnson is making moves to make sure that a deadly tragedy like that on the Rust movie set last month does not happen again.
On Thursday, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has become the latest, and biggest, Hollywood name to commit to not using real guns in future productions.
In an interview with Variety, The Rock announced that his production company, Seven Bucks Productions, will no longer use real guns on the sets of any of its productions and will use rubber guns instead.
“I can’t speak for anyone else, but I can tell you, without an absence of clarity here, that any movie that we have moving forward with Seven Bucks Productions — any movie, any television show, or anything we do or produce — we won’t use real guns at all,” Johnson toldVariety.
“We’re going to switch over to rubber guns, and we’re going to take care of it in the post. We’re not going to worry about the dollars; we won’t worry about what it costs,” the actor added.
.@TheRock pledges to end the use of real guns on all Seven Bucks Productions sets, following the death of Halyna Hutchins: “We’re going to switch over to rubber guns. We’re going to take care of it in post. We’re not going to worry about the dollars.” https://t.co/M232HP48fJ pic.twitter.com/owKGyg18m0
— Variety (@Variety) November 4, 2021
Johnson’s pledge comes after cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot last month on the Rust film set in Santa Fe, N.M. While practicing a scene, actor Alec Baldwin discharged a prop gun that he was told did not contain live rounds, according to affidavits shared by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office. Hutchins was rushed to a nearby hospital via helicopter, where she died.
Director Joel Souza, who was standing behind Hutchins at the time, was shot in the shoulder but survived. The shooting remains under investigation.
Here’s more of what Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson said:
“We lost a life,” he said. “My heart goes out to her family and everybody on set. I’ve known Alec, too, for a very long time.”
“I love the movie business,” Johnson continued. “There are safety protocols and measures that we have always taken in the movie business and we take very seriously, and these sets are safe sets, and we’re proud of that. 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.”
“Any movie we do that Seven Bucks does with any studio, the rule is we’re not going to use real guns. That’s it,” the former professional wrestler asserted.
Seven Bucks Productions co-founder Dany Garcia echoed Johnson’s calls.
“With any movie we do, safety is always paramount for us, and obviously we’ve made a lot of movies that feature firearms,” Garcia said.
“There are stringent protocols in how we approach those things and it was heartbreaking to see what happened on that set,” she said of “Rust.” “And also to hear about it, you could hear the breakdowns in the protocol that would have typically prevented that.”
“I think the rest of the industry has felt the ripples,” Garcia added. “I know, for us, going forward, we’re never going to deal with live guns again on-set at all, even for blanks — it’s just not necessary. Forever, moving forward, we’re going to use rubber guns because it’s just not necessary.”
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