Why Movie Sets Are More Lethal Than We Thought

The shooting dead of director of photography Halyna Hutchins on a film set in Santa Fe, last week is a stark reminder to the filmmaking community that, though they work in fantasy, actions on set can have real world consequences.

On Thursday last, while filming the Western Rust, the movie’s star Alec Baldwin discharged a prop gun, which killed Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza.

An Associated Press report from 2016 determined that from 1990 until the time of publication, at least 43 people died on sets in the U.S. and more than 150 had been left with life-altering injuries.

And we wanted to look at some of these and see if these deaths resulted in safer conditions on sets.

Our own Alison Hyland delved in to the topic…