Rust opens in theatres more than three years after on-set shooting of cinematographer

More than three years after cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot on the set of the Alec Baldwin film Rust, the movie has come to theatres, opening quietly Friday with the tragedy of its making still hanging over it.

While rehearsing a scene on the New Mexico set in 2021, producer-star Baldwin pointed a prop gun at Hutchins, only for it to suddenly go off, firing a live round that killed Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza.

The shocking accident ground the film to a halt and triggered a year-long investigation.

But now, the film is available in theatres through a limited theatrical release, meaning it joins a list of films released despite tragic accidents on set, including The Crow and Twilight Zone: The Movie.

The armourer for Rust, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for involuntary manslaughter. The same charge was brought against Baldwin, but was dismissed after the prosecution was accused of improperly withholding evidence. Dave Halls, assistant director on Rust, pleaded no contest to negligent use of a firearm for not properly checking the gun had no live rounds in it before handing it to Baldwin.

The fate of the film itself hung in the balance until, a year and a half after the shooting, production resumed, with Souza returning to complete his job as director and Bianca Cline joining to do the remaining cinematography.

Souza has said he decided to finish the film to honour Hutchins's work and also to benefit her family. Although the full terms of her family's settlement with producers are sealed, a news release from the film confirmed that her husband, Matthew, and son Andros would be receiving profits from the film, and that the original producers will not gain financially from its release.

WATCH | Judge dismisses charges against Baldwin (from July 2024):

A New Mexico judge dismissed involuntary manslaughter charges against actor Alec Baldwin on Friday after his lawyers alleged police hid evidence of the source of the live round that killed Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in 2021.

"The family wanted it completed," Souza told the Guardian earlier this week, adding that while he'd initially been "repelled by the thought of going back … I couldn't live with the idea of someone else doing it."

When asked what he would change if he could, he replied, "I wish I never wrote the damn movie."

Rust had its world premiere at the Camerimage Film Festival in Poland in November.

Rachel Mason, a friend of Hutchins who created a documentary about her death called Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna, shared a clip from the Hulu doc on Instagram on Thursday to mark the theatrical release of Rust.

"These are Halyna's images and this is Halyna's voice. Rust is Halyna's film. You can see this work of art now at selected theaters," she wrote. "The people who made this film with her are people who deserve compassion."

It isn't the first time that a film has been completed following a tragic accident on set.

Art Scholl, a veteran pilot and cameraman, was killed during the filming of the 1986 blockbuster Top Gun while shooting aerial footage for a scene in which the character Goose dies during an aborted mission.

On the set of the 1983 film Twilight Zone: The Movie, Vic Morrow and two child actors aged six and seven, Renee Shin-Yi Chen and Myca Dinh Le, were all killed when a low-flying helicopter lost control and crashed into them.

The horrific accident saw co-director John Landis and four others on the film's team facing involuntary manslaughter charges — though none were found to be criminally liable — and prompted tightening regulations for on-set safety.

Perhaps the closest mirror to Hutchins's death is that of Brandon Lee: the 28-year-old star, son of martial arts legend Bruce Lee, was filming the final scenes of noir thriller The Crow when another actor shot him with a prop gun that had been improperly loaded. Lee died hours later.

The remaining scenes were shot with his stunt double, and the film was eventually released in 1994, going on to gross over $50 million US worldwide. Lee's sister, Shannon Lee, told CNN in 2023 that the family had wanted to share his final work, knowing how proud of it he was.

"It would have seemed really unfair for him not to get to share that with the world," she said.

Set in 1880s Wyoming, Rust follows a young teenager named Lucas and his estranged grandfather, a grizzled outlaw played by Baldwin.

The finished film doesn't contain the scene Baldwin was rehearsing when the gun went off, but in a western action film, gunshots and violence are an inevitable refrain throughout the story. The dissonance of assessing a film about a gunslinging outlaw considering the surrounding context is reflected in the hesitant tone of reviews of the film, with many praising the striking visuals of Hutchins's — and Cline's — cinematography, while also noting that Rust largely fails to step out of the shadow of Hutchins's death on its own merits.

"There's not a moment in Rust in which one loses awareness of the tragedy," Jocelyn Noveck of The Associated Press wrote, adding that the movie is "better in some aspects" than viewers may have expected.

"Like The Crow or Twilight Zone: The Movie, Rust is a film that's forever tied to one fatal day," Brian Truitt of USA Today wrote.

Whether or not many audiences will be interested in seeing Rust remains to be seen. But those who make the trip to theatres won't be able to forget the cinematographer's death for long.

At the end of the film, the words "...for Halyna," appear onscreen, with Hutchins's name repeated in Ukrainian as well. For the film's final message, there's a quote from the late cinematographer: "What can we do to make this better?"