A First Look at ‘Rust’: Years After the On-Set Tragedy, the Western Is Finally Finished

Now, nearly four years after the tragedy, Rust has been completed and will finally be released, showcasing much of the last imagery Hutchins ever filmed. While details of how and when the movie will become available to audiences are still in flux, Souza says moviegoers should expect to see it sometime in the months ahead. He says Decal Releasing will be putting the film out for home release, while a confined theatrical run on about 150 screens is also in the works from Falling Forward Films.

Vanity Fair has seen the film, a somber and often moving story about survival and injustice in a merciless time and place. In a haunting irony, it’s about a boy named Lucas Hollister who kills a man in an accidental shooting and is sentenced to hang for it. He escapes when his outlaw grandfather, played by Baldwin, breaks him out and takes him on the run.

Rust, of course, now has the challenge of emerging from the shadow of what went so terribly wrong. Prop armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was convicted of involuntary manslaughter last year and sentenced to a year and half in prison for loading the live round into Baldwin’s prop gun, while assistant director Dave Halls, who failed to check the rounds in the prop, accepted a plea bargain for negligent exploit of a deadly weapon and received a suspended sentence and six months of probation. Baldwin was also charged with involuntary manslaughter amid widespread debate about whether an actor should be held responsible for a prop he was assured was unthreatening. His charge was later dismissed over prosecutorial misconduct.

Souza was never accused of any wrongdoing. He eventually recovered and came home to his sons. Hutchins, who also had a son, was not as fortunate.

Many questioned whether Rust should be finished—and Souza was among them. In the end, he did what he thought Hutchins herself would want. “We worked very closely together. The work she was doing was her best work, and for it to just vanish…” Souza says. “I don’t expect people to necessarily all agree or understand, but every fiber of my being just tells me that I can’t let that disappear. It’s not that we’re trying to exploit anything. I want to share her work with the world. I want people to see what she was capable of.”