Eva Green wanted to avoid another Rust-type accident on set.
BBC
The 42-year-old French actress and former Bond girl Eva Green, who is suing financiers for her fee for the failed British science fiction film A Patriot, said in a London High Court on Monday, January 30, 2023, that the B-movie could have killed her career because it was cutting corners in stunt safety and crew pay.
Green, whose credits include Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City and Tim Burton’s Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, is suing White Lantern Films and SMC Speciality Finance for $1 million, a fee she says she is owed due to the collapse of A Patriot, in which she was set to play the lead role as a soldier alongside Helen Hunt and Charles Dance. In original court filings, Green laid out her breach of contract claim, which included concerns about a “disorganized and shambolic” pre-production and a claim that the initial film budget ($10.8 million) was halved, a “hopelessly inadequate amount” for the production of a movie the actress states.
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In response to the actress’s lawsuit for payment, White Lantern filed a counter claim for breach of contract against Green, who was also an executive producer on A Patriot, blaming her for the film’s failure before it went into production in late 2019 and saying the actress never wanted the film to be made. The production company further alleged Green’s conduct was unreasonable (a legal buzzword) and in breach of her contractual obligations on the film; thus, she is not entitled to her fee. White Lantern’s lawyers cited WhatsApp messages from Green in which she described one producer as a “fucking moron” and another as “evil,” the films financiers as “arseholes,” and some of the proposed crew members as “shitty peasants.”
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Eva Green Was Concerned About Set Safety
Reuters reported that while giving evidence at the High Court on Monday, Green said she “really fell in love” with the story: “It was very exciting, a role of a soldier, which I have never played before. It was about climate change. It was very dear to my heart.”
However, Green also said that before A Patriot was set to start filming she became concerned that the film’s production team was cutting corners, citing that her stunt training had been reduced down to five days from four weeks and the fact that film’s producers did not want to pay standard industry rates for a quality crew. This is “extremely dangerous for action films,” she said, referencing the fatal 2021 shooting of Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust, for which Alec Baldwin is facing a charge of involuntary manslaughter.
“You look at what happened with Alec Baldwin on the movie Rust, the producers cutting corners, no safety measures and a young woman got killed,” Green told the court.
The trial to determine liability will conclude next week, with any award settled later.
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