The Crow Reboot Doesn’t Feature Any Real Guns

Despite being filmed in 2022, The Crow reboot sat on the shelf for over two years until it finally hit theaters on August 23, 2024, a little over 31 years since the accidental shooting death of actor Brandon Lee while filming The Crow (1994). With both fatal shootings casting a dark cloud over the set of the The Crow reboot, director Rupert Sanders chose to ditch the use of real guns in a desire to maintain a safe production. “Safety is a number one priority,” Sanders told Variety.

While making finals preparations to begin the The Crow reboot’s production, Sanders weighed his options to ensure that scenes with guns were handled safely.

“The first day, I met with the special effects department and the armorer, who was great, in Prague,” Sanders recalled. “They were very safety-conscious. They follow all the same guidelines as the military when dealing with weapons, but I didn’t even want to risk that.”

In order to rule out the possibility of any gun-related accidents on the set of his action thriller, Sanders banned the use of any weapons capable of firing live ammunition or even blank rounds. Instead, he chose to equip actors on set for The Crow reboot with a variety of alternatives including Airsoft guns as well as rubber and metal decoys, which had no firing mechanism capable of shooting any type of projectile.

“The beauty of the Airsoft is that the slide on a Glock will still move back, but then you have to add the shell casing,” Sanders said. According to Sanders, not having real guns on the set of The Crow reboot was a “price worth paying,” even if the process ate into the film’s already limited budget. In order to maintain a sense of realism for the prop guns, smoke and muzzle flashes were then added in post-production.

By banning the use of real guns on the set of The Crow reboot, Sanders hoped to avoid any possibility of duplicating the tragedy that afflicted the set of The Crow (1994). In a scene using a real revolver, Brandon Lee was shot in the abdomen after the gun was not properly cleared by the firearms team. A dummy bullet had become unknowingly lodged in the barrel of the revolver, which was then propelled outwards by the firing of a second blank round, fatally injuring Lee.

The on-set death of Lee while filming led to an investigation into the shooting, which ultimately determined that the event was an accident caused by negligence. In August 1993, Lee’s mother, Linda Lee Cadwell, filed a lawsuit against the Edward R. Pressman Film Corporation and over a dozen others for the shooting death of her son. Just two months later, the lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed amount.

Source: Variety