Gerard Butler has never been one to stray away from danger while filming one of his action flicks. Remember this is the same guy who had someone inject him with bee venom during the filming of Geostorm. Well, while working on his new movie Plane, the Scottish actor experienced “burning alive” after accidentally pouring acid on his face.
Action films had a way of dominating the big screen during the 1990s which we see less of due to the Star Wars and superhero craze. Well, Gerard Butler is an actor contributing very well to the action genre today even managing to knock out the Oscar-baited film Blonde off Netflix’s #1 spot three days after its release. While speaking on The Late Night Show with Seth Meyers, Butler talked about the terrifying experience of feeling like he was “burning alive” during the set of Plane while attempting to repair a faulty brake in one of the aircrafts before take-off.
Now I'm sticking my hand in between these two wheels, kind of pretending that I know what I'm doing. Every time I bring my hands out, they're covered in blood and green fluid, right? And I'm like, 'I don't know what this green fluid is.'
All of this trouble for the sake of pretending to know how to fix a plane for his new movie. So fortunate there was no permanent damage involved. It also doesn’t help that filming took place during one of the hottest days in Puerto Rico. Not only was the Olympus Has Fallen star drenched in blood and acid, he was also pretty sweaty too during the ordeal. This action star continued to talk about how excruciating this on-set moment was for him.
I'm rubbing my face and, suddenly, it's in my throat. It's in my mouth. It's up my nose. It's in my eyes. It's burning my face, and I mean burning. [...] I'm just, like, burning alive… So it was intense. It actually burned for hours, but it was great for the sequence.
The tension increased when a debate among the crew followed about what to do to get the substance off. Some said to wash his face while others said that would make it worse. While Butler never says how exactly he recovered from the incident, hopefully he followed what the CDC says which is to wash your face immediately and seek medical attention. Clearly, the 300 actor is dedicated to his craft and doesn’t regret the experience if it made his performance believable for the big screen.
In the trailer for Plane, Gerard Butler plays a pilot making an emergency landing in a hostile territory and feeling no choice but to team up with a convicted murderer who was on the plane, played by Evil’s Mike Coulter, to save his passengers. Serving as the film’s star and co-producer, Butler told Seth Meyers that he wanted this movie to feel like a throwback to action films that starred box office champs like Harrison Ford and Bruce Willis. Other things we know about this action movie is that Inner City's Jean-François Richet will be directing it. The screenplay was based on an original story written by British spy fiction writer Charles Cumming and co-written by Fighting Tommy Riley’s J.P. Davis. Based on Plane’s trailer, it looks like Butler and Coulter will be an unstoppable force taking down enemy captors with action violence similar to what we’d find in a classic Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.
Gerard Butler being able to survive a toxic acid pouring while on the set of Plane proves that he’s just as strong as the characters he plays. You can watch him kick some serious ass in the 2023 release of Plane coming to theaters on January 13th.
