Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is promising major changes on his film sets going forward. Following the tragic accidental shooting on the set of Alec Baldwin’s Rust, which left Halyna Hutchins, a 42-year-old cinematographer and mother of one, dead, the Jumanji star has pledged to stop the use of real guns for films produced by his company Seven Bucks Productions. Instead, Johnson said rubber guns will be used during production, with post-production work to make them realistic.
The actor made the pledge when speaking with Variety on the red carpet premiere of Red Notice, his upcoming star-studded action-packed film for Netflix. Reflecting on the tragedy, Johnson said he was “heartbroken” when he learned of the incident, saying, “We lost a life. My heart goes out to her family and everybody on set. I’ve known Alec, too, for a very long time.” But Johnson isn’t willing to just sit idly by. Instead, he is vowing to make real changes to prevent such a tragedy from happening again. Johnson said that within hours of the news of the shooting breaking, he was on the phone with his team to discuss what changes his company needed to make. While Johnson said he loves “the movie business” and there are currently “safety protocols and measures” in place that they “take very seriously… accidents do happen… 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.”
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“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 said. “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… 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.”
Johnson is just the latest figure in Hollywood to promise an end to the use of real firearms on set of productions. In the wake of the Rust tragedy, which is still being investigated, Bandar Albuliwi, a director who graduated from the American Film Institute Conservatory, created a Change.org petition “to ban the use of real firearms on set and demand better crew working conditions.” Albuliwi said, “We need to make sure that this avoidable tragedy never happens again,” adding that “there is no excuse for something like this to happen in the 21st century” and “Real guns are no longer needed on film production sets… Change needs to happen before additional talented lives are lost.” The petition has since received more than 105,000 signatures.
The petition drew the attention of Olivia Wilde, who tweeted a link, adding, “Hollywood: It’s time to create ‘Halyna’s Law,’ which will ban the use of real firearms on film production sets and create a safe working environment for everyone involved.” Meanwhile, Eric Kripke, the showrunner for Amazon’s The Boys, pledged to stop using guns loaded with blanks on his sets.
