How do you plan the roll-out of a film that became notorious for an on-set tragedy?
The ill-fated western Rust has been trying to figure that out. The film was finally released in the United States at the weekend, 3½ years after its cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, was shot and killed by a real bullet fired from an old-fashioned revolver that its star, Alec Baldwin, was rehearsing with on a set in New Mexico.
Now that the film has finally come out after years of lawsuits, investigations and two criminal trials, its roll-out has been decidedly muted. Unable to find traction at better-known film festivals, Rust premiered last fall at a small cinematography festival in Poland.
Now, with its release in a limited number of US cinemas and on demand, it is forgoing the traditional red-carpet premiere, and Baldwin has not sat for any splashy interviews.
The film-makers say that their overriding goal in finishing the film and pushing for its release is to showcase the final work of Hutchins, who was a 42-year-old up-and-coming cinematographer when she was killed. And a legal settlement calls for some of the film’s earnings to go to her husband and son.
“If I was to make a direct plea to someone about seeing the movie,” said the film’s director, Joel Souza, “I’d say that a lot of really good people worked really hard on finishing this movie to honour her.”
Souza was injured in the shooting by the bullet that killed Hutchins, which passed through her and lodged in his shoulder. He said that at first he doubted he would ever want to return to the movie business. But eventually a plan came together to finish Rust, with Souza back in the director’s chair.
The plan not only had the blessing of Hutchins’ husband, Matthew, but also was at the heart of a settlement agreement he reached with the movie’s producers, including Baldwin, after he filed a wrongful-death lawsuit.
Brian Panish, a lawyer for Matthew Hutchins, said in an email last week that the Rust producers have still not paid the full settlement owed to the family, which was due in 2023.
The production company has said that part of the settlement is tied to the film’s earnings, which will go toward paying Hutchins, who is now an executive producer on the film, and his son, Andros, who was nine when his mother died.
The film’s original producers will not benefit financially from the movie’s release, according to Melina Spadone, a representative for Rust Movie Productions.
So bringing out the film entails a delicate balance: earning money for the Hutchins family while taking care to market it with the sobriety required for a movie synonymous with real-life tragedy.
After Matthew Hutchins reached the settlement with producers, the movie finished filming in Montana in 2023 with a new cinematographer, Bianca Cline. The film-makers decided to use only fake weapons that were incapable of firing.
Cline and Souza’s main priority was to salvage as much original footage by Halyna Hutchins as possible, which meant putting together a puzzle of old and new footage by employing editing tricks and, in a few instances, special effects.
As the film was being completed, the legal drama surrounding the fatal shooting only intensified.
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the armourer who loaded a live bullet into the gun that day in 2021, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 18 months in prison. Facing his own criminal case, Baldwin went on trial in Santa Fe on an involuntary-manslaughter charge, but a judge dismissed the case after finding that the state of New Mexico had withheld evidence from the defence. (Baldwin is now suing prosecutors over what he says was a “malicious prosecution”.)
Previous films marked by tragedy saw a wider release. After the actor Brandon Lee died during the filming of The Crow, the movie was released in more than 2,000 US cinemas in 1994 and grossed more than $50 million. (It had a bigger budget than Rust, which resumed production with a budget of about $8 million, or €7 million.)
Rust was released on about 115 screens around the United States. It was released simultaneously on US on-demand services including Prime Video and Apple TV+. Representatives for the movie said the distribution plan was made with the intention of maximising profits for the Hutchins family.
Some critics have questioned the decision to release the film, including several cinematographers who pushed back on the plan to premiere the movie in Poland.
But people involved in it said that they wanted to honour her memory. “In the long arc of time, I believe it’s better that at the end of all this there’s a finished movie, rather than just a tragedy and then nothing,” Devon Werkheiser, an actor in the film, said in a video posted to his Instagram account last week.
Rachel Mason, a friend of Halyna Hutchins who made a documentary about the tragedy, was given permission to comb through her text messages about the making of Rust and her notebooks, where she recorded ideas for the film. “Halyna wanted to make Rust, and people don’t always give her that,” she said. “She would not have touched a film that she didn’t care about.”
In the documentary, Hutchins’ mother, Olga Solovey, who is suing the production along with her husband and other daughter, says she wanted to see her daughter’s final work completed.
Souza, the director, said that some cast and crew members gathered in Los Angeles late last week for a small private screening.
“It’s a tough one to market,” he said. “How do you message it? The best way I can think of is that you hope people will like the movie on its merits.” – This article originally appeared in the New York Times
