Making movies can be difficult business. There are a lot of factors in play, a lot of money involved, and a lot of stress. If you’ve ever known anyone who worked on a movie set before you could probably see them age over the span of a production thanks to the fourteen-hour days and being yelled at a lot. Sometimes these factors ball up and an accident happens. For the upcoming Tom Cruise film, American Made (formerly Mena), that’s exactly what happened last year when a plane crashed during the filming of the movie, leaving two dead.
Now that plane crash is once again rearing its ugly head a year later, THR reports. The fact that a film about a pilot being used as a CIA covert operative involved producers pushing a pilot to do something that he was uncomfortable with is perhaps one of those cosmic coincidences that are hard to overlook, but the family of Carlos Berl, one of the pilots who died in the accident, are suing the film’s producers. Berl alerted the production crew that he was unfamiliar with the plane being used for the film and would need additional training before he felt comfortable, but that wasn’t enough.
“Even prior to traveling to South America, Carlos repeatedly informed the production companies that he had insufficient flight experience in that particular aircraft and required flight instruction prior to flying. His requests were completely ignored.”
Now his family has filed a lawsuit against Cross Creek Pictures and Imagine Entertainment for wrongful death and survival damages. The families of Berl, stunt pilot Alan Purwin and Jimmy Lee Garland, one of the pilot’s who survived the crash, are involved in the lawsuit.
(Via THR)
