Sylvester Stallone's The Expendables became a huge surprise success by showing guns, explosions and lots of onscreen deaths, and got a sequel that promised to give us even more. Unfortunately some of that mayhem has made its way offscreen. Deadline reports that a stuntman was killed and another was injured yesterday on the set of The Expendables 2 outside Sofia, Bulgaria. The scene was being shot under the supervision of a second unit stunt team, while director Simon West and Stallone were shooting with the main unit two and a half hours away.
Producers Nu Image/Millennium Films release a statement confirming the accident, and promised that "The filmmakers are working closely with the authorities in responding to and investigating this accident." There's no word on whether or not they're slowing down production, or exactly what the investigation might involve-- Deadline writes that the stunt involved an explosion, and there are obviously plenty of ways a stunt like that, even one carefully controlled, can go wrong.
The Expendables 2, of course, is far from the first set to suffer an accident that resulted in death, and stuntmen take these jobs with the knowledge that they're putting their lives in danger. But it might be a little tough to watch The Expendables 2 when it comes out next August and revel in all the random extras getting blown to smithereens, all the while knowing that one of those deaths is real. Then again, people manage to watch The Crow, a movie that caused the death of its star Brandon Lee, so maybe with time and the power of cinema we learn to look past these things.
