Hulu aims to center late cinematographer Halyna Hutchins with Rust doc

Rachel Mason, a friend and collaborator of Hutchins', is set to direct the new film.

By Mary Kate Carr  |  February 6, 2025 | 1:37pm
Photo: Mat Hayward/Getty Images
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Hulu aims to center late cinematographer Halyna Hutchins with Rust doc

Since 2021, there’s been near-constant coverage of the Rust tragedy, in which a prop gun fired by Alec Baldwin injured director Joel Souza and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. But “[in] the media frenzy which followed her death, it felt as if Halyna was erased, her loss eclipsed by the surrounding controversies,” Rachel Mason said in a statement (via The Hollywood Reporter). As such, Mason set out to make a documentary that “aims to keep her at the center, while offering a portrait of the experience of those with whom she spent her final 12 days, which hopefully, through their efforts, offers the world a very much unfinished portrait of Halyna.” That documentary is Last Take: Rust And The Story Of Halyna, which will air on Hulu on March 11. 

Hutchins was a friend and collaborator of Mason, who previously directed Circus Of Books and the Max docuseries An Update On Our Family. In her statement, Mason said of Hutchins, “While she was alive, I could never have imagined making a film about her. My hope was to make films with her, and to support her in all the many films that she was sure to make.” Mason reportedly accessed Hutchins’ personal archives for Last Take, in addition to behind-the-scenes material from the set of Rust and public court records. Hutchins’ husband Matthew Hutchins, who was made an executive producer of Rust in the wake of her death, will also serve as an EP on the film. 

According to a press release from Hulu (via THR), Last Take will go “beyond the public narrative to reveal the untold human story of that terrible day and all that followed—from the vantage point of the people at the center of the tragedy. The film weaves together the accounts of those who were on the set of Rust that day and of those, like Mason, who not only lost a cherished friend and colleague but who are still navigating the trauma of the aftermath.”

 
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