His next project. Alec Baldwin will star in a movie about the 1970 shootings at Kent State University after he finishes work on Rust.
The Emmy winner, 65, will play the school’s former president Robert I. White in the new film Kent State, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The movie will explore the events of May 4, 1970, when four students at the Ohio university were killed by National Guard members during a protest against the Vietnam War.
One day after news of the movie appeared online, Entertainment Tonight reported that no actual guns will be used on the production’s set. Kent State, which will be written and directed by Karen Spade, is also set to star Dermot Mulroney, Clancy Brown, Christopher Backus, Christopher Ammanuel, Andrew Ortenberg and Jacqueline Emerson.
News of Baldwin’s involvement in the project comes days after the 30 Rock alum wrapped production on Rust. The New York native was filming the troubled western drama in October 2021 when he shot and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins with a prop gun that mistakenly had live rounds in it. Director Joel Souza was also shot but recovered from his injuries.
Baldwin was charged with involuntary manslaughter in January for his involvement in the shooting, but the charges were dropped last month.
“We are pleased with the decision to dismiss the case against Alec Baldwin and we encourage a proper investigation into the facts and circumstances of this tragic accident,” Luke Nikas and Alex Spiro, attorneys for the Beetlejuice actor, said in an April statement.
Special prosecutors Kari T. Morrissey and Jason J. Lewis, meanwhile, said they could not “proceed under the current time constraints” of the case. “We therefore will be dismissing the involuntary manslaughter charges against Mr. Baldwin to conduct further investigation,” they said in a statement in April. “This decision does not absolve Mr. Baldwin of criminal culpability and charges may be refiled. Our follow-up investigation will remain active and ongoing.”
After the initial charges were announced, Nikas said his client planned to fight the accusations in court. “This decision distorts Halyna Hutchins’ tragic death and represents a terrible miscarriage of justice,” the attorney said in a statement in January. “Mr. Baldwin had no reason to believe there was a live bullet in the gun — or anywhere on the movie set. He relied on the professionals with whom he worked, who assured him the gun did not have live rounds. We will fight these charges, and we will win.”
Baldwin, for his part, has long maintained that he is not at fault for the death of Hutchins, who was 42. “I know 1,000 percent I’m not responsible for what happened to her,” the Glengarry Glen Ross star told an investigator in a phone call after the shooting.
In his first interview after the incident, Baldwin told George Stephanopoulos that he “would never” pull the trigger on a gun while pointing it at someone. “I have no idea [how a bullet got in there],” the former Match Game host said in December 2021. “Someone put a live bullet in a gun. A bullet that wasn’t even supposed to be on the property.”
