Gregg Allman has written a personal letter to director Randall Miller, asking him to pull the plug on Midnight Rider, a biopic of the legendary rocker, after the fatal train accident that killed second-camera assistant Sarah Jones and injured six others in February. “I am writing to you as one human being to another, and appealing to you from my heart,” Allman wrote, as first reported by the The Hollywood Reporter. “I am asking you from a personal perspective not to go forward.”
Production was already suspended on the movie, which was being filmed in Georgia, but earlier this month, Miller’s company Unclaimed Freight Productions tentatively announced plans to resume shooting in Los Angeles in June. Immediately, a campaign was launched on Facebook urging the crew to boycott the production, and earlier this week, actor William Hurt, who had been cast as Allman, withdrew from the project.
It remains unclear whether the project will resume, especially with the online campaign growing louder following Hurt’s departure. Unclaimed Freight declined to comment, but Allman’s letter will certainly lend additional momentum to the effort to shut it down for good. “Your desires as a filmmaker should not outweigh your obligations as a human being,” Allman wrote. “I am asking you to do the right thing and to set aside your attempts to resume the production out of respect for Sarah, her family and the loss that all of us feel so deeply.”
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