Dwayne Johnson Vows To Ban Real Guns From All His Film Sets After Tragic 'Rust' Shooting

Safety is of utmost importance to Dwayne Johnson, who has pledged to ban the use of real guns on his film sets. This comes after the tragic death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on Alec Baldwin's film Rust. Alec Baldwin discharged a prop gun on the film's set that accidentally killed Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza. Speaking to Variety, The Rock shared, "First of all, I was heartbroken. 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."

Johnson vowed that his production company would stop using real guns on its sets. Instead, he will only use rubber guns on his film sets. The 49-year-old star also plans on enforcing the rule with any other studio he works with. "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. We're going to switch over to rubber guns, and we're going to take care of it in post," he said. "We're not going to worry about the dollars; we won't worry about what it costs."

"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," he said.

According to ET Online, Alec Baldwin addressed the tragedy in Vermont on October 30, saying, "She was my friend," referring to Hutchins. "The day I arrived in Santa Fe to start shooting, I took her to dinner with Joel, the director. We were a very, very well-oiled crew shooting a film together, and then this horrible event happened... There are incidental accidents on film sets from time to time, but nothing like this. This is a one-in-a-trillion episode. It's a one in a trillion event." He added that he's "extremely interested" in "an ongoing effort to limit the use of firearms on film sets." "But remember, how many bullets have been fired in films and TV shows in the last 75 years. This is America. How many bullets have gone off in movies and on TV sets before? How many, billions in the last 75 years?" he asked. "And nearly all of it without incident. So what has to happen now is, we have to realize that when it does go wrong and it's this horrible, catastrophic thing, some new measures have to take place."