Tom Cruise has been partially blamed for a 2015 fatal airplane crash on the set of his movie "American Made" that killed two people and seriously injured another, People magazine reported Wednesday.
Cruise is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit brought by the families of Alan Purwin and Carlos Berl, the two pilots killed in the September 2015 crash, but People said new court documents in the 2016 lawsuit claim Cruise and director Doug Liman contributed to the incident.
"The demands of filming in Colombia, together with Cruise's and director Doug Liman's enthusiasm for multiple takes of lavish flying sequences, added hours to every filming day and added days to the schedule," court documents said, adding that they desired a "high-risk, action-packed" movie.
The movie, slated for release Sept. 29, is based on the life of Barry Seal, a former TWA pilot who smuggled drugs for the Medellin Cartel before becoming a federal informant.
The Hollywood Reporter said that the lawsuit is just the tip of the iceberg of the movie's legal troubles. The Purwin and Garland estates are also suing each other as well as producers Imagine Entertainment, Vendian Entertainment, and Cross Creek Pictures for wrongful death and damages.
The movie's insurer, Great American Insurance Company, filed its own lawsuit in May, charging that it had no duty to cover the fatal accident partly because the aircraft transporting crew was "used for an unlawful purpose," noted The Hollywood Reporter.
"Lapses in planning, coordinating, scheduling, and flight safety that were the defendants' responsibility resulted in an unqualified and unprepared pilot being pressed into service for a dangerous flight in a vintage aircraft across an unfamiliar mountain pass in bad weather," documents involving the family's lawsuit against the production companies said, per People.
The Hollywood Reporter said various groups have even quibbled about who was flying the plane at the time of the crash. Berl's lawsuit charged that Garland, Cruise's movie double and a partner with S&S Aviation, was flying, the publication said. But Purwin's lawsuit suggested that Berl was actually flying. The production companies are also suing S&S Aviation over the accident.
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