Alec Baldwin is a fugitive on the run in the Rust trailer.
The first trailer just dropped for the long-delayed Rust, a Western film set in Kansas during the 1880s about Harland Rust (Baldwin), an aging outlaw, who comes out of hiding to rescue his orphaned nephew Lucas McCalister (Patrick Scott McDermott) from the gallows after he accidentally killed a rancher.
The trailer arrives nearly four years after the unthinkable happened on the set of Rust. During filming, Baldwin accidentally shot a loaded prop gun that hit the crew behind the camera, ultimately killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injuring writer and director Joel Souza.
The incident received widespread media coverage and resulted in criminal charges against Baldwin and the film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. In July of 2024, Baldwin’s case was dismissed on the grounds that the prosecution withheld evidence from the defense. However, Gutierrez-Reed was indicted for involuntary manslaughter and is serving an 18-month prison sentence for her role in loading a live round into Baldwin’s prop gun.
After the tragic shooting, filming for Rust stopped completely. Production resumed in April 2023, but without a significant portion of the original cast and crew. Baldwin and Souza chose to return, and Bianca Cline took over as cinematographer.
In a 2024 interview with Vanity Fair, Souza spoke about wanting to finish the film for Hutchins, even though initially, he was entirely against it.
“The people that have money on the line—I don’t give a d*** if they ever get a penny or not,” Souza said. “It was a long time afterward that somebody floated the idea of: Would you be willing to come back? The answer was no. No, no, no, no. Never ever. In fact, there was a very long period of time where I thought I was just done ever doing this for a living.”
However, after learning that Matt Hutchins, Halyna’s husband, was going to be involved as producer, Souza decided to rejoin the film.
“At a certain point, it was conveyed to me that there was going to be some form of settlement and that Matt Hutchins was going to be involved as a producer. This is what he wanted, Souza said. “I knew that the movie being finished would financially benefit Halyna’s family, which is very important to me. And I know this can sound trite for people who aren’t creative, but her last work matters. People seeing her last work matters. That was the tipping point for me in the decision.”
Rust is set to release in select theaters nationwide on May 2.
