John Wick 4 and GUNS

The director of John Wick 4, Chad Stahelski, shared how he feels about guns on movie sets and his thoughts on the tragic Rust shooting incident.

Chad said, “What happened on Rust … I wasn’t there, but the accidents that I’ve been around, seen, or been part of have always been human error. It’s never mechanical. So, let’s just talk about firearms.”

He continued, “Back in the day when it all started, they came up with blanks. A blank is a bullet without the projectile, but they couldn’t put you and me in the same shot, 5 feet apart, and one of us pull the trigger.”

He added, “The concussive force coming out at the end of the barrel would be enough to shatter your skull. Accidents like that did happen, and people died because of it. But in the past 10 years, they’ve come out with electronic guns, plug guns where it is impossible for anything to come out of the barrel, and total CG. That’s the way we do it. That technology is out there for everybody.”

Chad continued, “My feeling is that there’s no reason to have a live firearm on set. We can create cities and spaceships and Godzilla and all these things. We have the technology to do the same with firearms. But, for the last 100 years, Hollywood’s been using real firearms. And for prop houses, armorers, or supply houses to switch over, it would make their entire stock of real firearms useless. It comes down to the fact that it would cost certain people a great deal of money to switch over. No one wants to say that, but that’s the real reason. You don’t need firearms. The alternative is just going to cost you more money.”

John Wick 4 will be released on March 24th.