The Crow (film) - Death of Brandon Lee

Death of Brandon Lee

On March 31, 1993, at EUE Screen Gems Studios in Wilmington, North Carolina, Brandon Lee sustained an accidental gunshot wound on the set of the film. He was taken to an area hospital, where he later died. There were eight days left before shooting of the film was to be completed. The scenes involving Lee and Sofia Shinas's characters in their apartment had been saved for the end of filming so that Lee could work the final week without makeup. In the story, Lee's character Eric Draven comes home to find a gang of thugs raping his girlfriend, and he is shot and killed by Michael Massee's character Funboy.

Weeks prior to the event, a scene had been filmed that required shells to be shown being loaded into the handgun. Rather than using dummy rounds, inexperienced crew members, pressured by time constraints, purchased live ammunition, removed the bullets, dumped the gunpowder, and then replaced the bullets back into the empty cartridges with the live primers still in place. Unbeknownst to the crew, the bullet from one of the rounds became lodged in the barrel of the gun. It is believed that someone on set was playing with the gun, pulled the trigger and inadvertently caused the live primer to fire; this would have resulted in the bullet moving a couple of inches into the barrel of the gun.

When the time came to film the scene where Funboy shoots Eric, the same gun was loaded with blank cartridges. As the production company had sent the firearms specialist home early, responsibility for the guns was given to a prop assistant who was not aware of the rule for checking all firearms before and after any handling. Therefore, the barrel was not checked for obstructions when it came time to load it with the blank rounds. When the gun was fired, the propellant in the blank round – which is used to give the visible effect of a gunshot – dislodged the bullet and propelled it through Lee's abdomen and into his spine, where it lodged. The injury caused massive blood loss.

Soon after the accident, Lee was taken to the New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, where he died about 12 hours later, at 1:04 p.m. After Lee's death, the producers were faced with the decision of whether or not to continue with the film. Sofia Shinas, who had witnessed the accident, did not want to continue and went home to Los Angeles. The rest of the cast and crew, except for Ernie Hudson, whose brother-in-law had just died, stayed in Wilmington. Paramount, who were initially interested in distributing The Crow theatrically (originally a direct-to-video feature), opted out of involvement due to delays in filming and some controversy over the violent content being inappropriate given Lee's death. However, Miramax picked it up with the intention of releasing it in theatres and injected a further $8 million to complete the production, taking its budget to approximately $23 million. The cast and crew then took a break for script rewrites of the flashback scenes that had yet to be completed.