10 Film Shoots That Almost Ended in Disaster

Movie sets are often a dangerous place to be, as simulating reality generally entails embracing it. Whether working in a Hollywood studio or on location, there are many potential ways actors and crew can come into contact with danger, contending with natural disasters, unsafe props and set pieces, the tribulations of shooting in remote and isolated locations, and plain old human error.

Sometimes, there is barely a hair’s width between everyone walking away in one piece and the entire production being shut down for good. These are 10 movie shoots that almost ended in disaster but somehow pulled it back from the brink.

Related: 10 Little Known Facts About Popular Disaster Movies

10 Now You See Me (2013)

Rejuvenating magic post-David Blaine, Louis Leterrier’s Now You See Me assembled Jesse Eisenberg, Dave Franco, Woody Harrelson, and Isla Fisher as the Four Horseman, a troupe of magicians who manage impossible feats before braying audiences. And while most of the movie’s so-called magic is achieved by editing, camerawork, and even CGI, some of the stunts were performed for real.

Such is the case for the scene in which Fisher’s Henley Reeves is chained up in a water tank, with 60 seconds to break free before a shoal of hungry piranhas joins her. Given the bare-all nature of the glass tank, a body double couldn’t be used, and Fisher had to do the stunt herself.

While the character struggles and is apparently stuck before somehow breaking free, Fisher herself almost drowned. When it came to shooting the scene, the quick release on the actress’s chains failed to open between her ankles and wrists. As the cameras rolled, the crew assumed her struggle was part of the act and didn’t come to her aid. Thankfully, they figured it out in the nick of time, and she lived to see the movie.^[1]

9 Back to the Future Part III (1990)

The third chapter of the Back to the Future trilogy transplants action to the Wild West, with Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) stuck in the past and his protegee Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) having to come to rescue him.

Far from a quick stroll into town and a sharp exit, Marty—under the alias Clint Eastwood—gets caught up in all manner of shenanigans and winds up fighting for his life against a gang of gunslingers. Despite having the smarts of a 21st-century fella, Marty gets himself caught and strung up by a noose before the Doc manages to save him.

While the on-screen stakes are high from the outset, things were equally as dangerous on set. Even shooting Fox in the noose from the waist up, with him standing on a box, they couldn’t get the swinging motion realistic enough and opted to suspend him from the rope for real. Suspended from the gallows, Fox’s carotid artery was blocked by the noose, and he passed out, swinging unconscious for several seconds before director Robert Zemeckis got him down. Any longer, and Fox would have been out of the game for good.^[2]

8 The Abyss (1989)

Much of The Abyss takes place underwater, and director James Cameron would settle for nothing less than the real thing. He insisted on filming submerged, with safety co-divers and air tanks always a few meters away out of shot. This meant that in an emergency, there would be a delay before they could respond, forcing the actors to push their boundaries.

Unfortunately for Ed Harris, things went a little further than this when filming scenes on his own 45 feet (14 meters) down. During these scenes, he was dragged by a line while having to act, with no oxygen of his own, and relied on his safety diver between takes.

For one especially challenging take, Harris’s safety diver got caught up on one of the underwater lines and was unable to reach him. Thus, when Harris motioned to cut the scene and went looking for his support, he was on his own. Another diver reached him before he passed out but administered the regulator upside down. So Harris breathed in several mouthfuls of water. Thankfully, the cameraman stepped in before things turned fatal, but it was mere seconds’ difference between a good film and a disaster.^[3]

7 Super Mario Bros. (1993)

2023’s animated Super Mario Bros. Movie may have set a new standard for Mario movies, but that doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten the diabolical 1993 live-action original. Starring a plethora of talent in the form of John Leguizamo, Bob Hoskins, and Dennis Hopper, the ill-fated video game adaptation almost cost the actors involved more than just a dent in their reputation.

Hoskins, in particular, had a rough ride from the word go, signing on after seeing an early, more mature, and ultimately abandoned script by Dick Clement and Ian la Frenais without realizing he would be playing a video game character.

To add injury to insult, throughout the shoot, Hoskins wound up being nearly drowned, electrocuted, and stabbed four times, as well as having his finger broken when it was slammed in the door of a van. Yet somehow, he escaped serious injury, or worse, every time, helping bring in the production without too many delays and completing the movie in one piece.^[4]

6 The Craft (1996)

Gothic horror classic The Craft may not have the savvy script of the likes of Scream, but it still managed to put its indelible stamp on ’90s pop culture. The tale of four Catholic schoolgirls turned witches and fashionistas, the film gave voice to the black eyeliner crowd and helped seed the uber-cool supernatural style that Buffy rode in on.

While the witchcraft and spells conducted on set initially didn’t have anyone reaching for their rabbit’s foot, a series of odd occurrences turned up the heat and made for what was, at times, a dangerous shoot.

Most notably, the scene where the teen witches “call the corners” on the beach generated some unusual natural occurrences. The park ranger advised the film crew on the high tide line, but when filming began, the waves kept rising, chasing them further inland. This culminated in an abnormally violent wave that wiped out the cameras and the entire set. Fortunately, nobody got caught in the water, the crew managed to rebuild the set in time, and the cameras survived to film another scene.^[5]

5 Waterworld (1995)

Often referred to as “Mad Max at sea,” Waterworld envisions a post-apocalyptic future in which the polar ice caps have melted and the ocean has engulfed all natural land. Drifters, rogues, and pirates are left to sail the seas, vying for control of what limited resources remain, including Kevin Costner’s mutated Mariner.

Shot on location off the coast of Hawaii, the film forced the crew to contend with the elements and natural world. A turbulent production from beginning to end, Waterworld hit several near-fatal snags along the way to becoming a finished movie.

While filming, female lead Jeanne Tripplehorn and child actress Tina Majorino almost drowned after the bowsprit of their trimaran (a type of multi-hull sailboat) snapped and plunged them into the ocean. Costner also had a close brush with death when he was caught in a sudden patch of rough weather while lashed to the mast of his own trimaran. The team of around a dozen rescue divers had their work cut out for them but got everyone through the array of physical and technical difficulties without greater incident.^[6]

4 The Exorcist (1973)

On any shoot where the film deals with supernatural beings and possession, there will be a certain amount of superstition. And while it’s usually unfounded, there is a case to be made for the production of The Exorcist having an unusually dark shadow hanging over it.

The movie deals with the exorcism of 12-year-old Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair), who is possessed by the demon Pazuzu. Despite the presence of plenty of clergymen (or at least people dressed as clergymen), there were a few nearly disastrous occurrences on set.

While they were shooting the exorcism scene, the set was refrigerated overnight with a bank of air conditioning units so that the camera would pick up the actors’ breath when the camera was rolling, meaning that when the cast and crew arrived in the morning, the entire set was ice cold—not a great place for a fire. Nevertheless, the units caught fire one night and burned down most of the set. Although this shut production down for six weeks, the outcome would have been far worse if it hadn’t happened in the wee hours of the morning.^[7]

3 Apocalypse Now (1979)

Francis Ford Coppola took the filming of his Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now to the Philippines, shooting on location with a large crew and an out-of-control budget. He also dumped his Hollywood actors in the rough to give them a taste of what living and fighting in the jungle was really like.

While his motives were true, this royally backfired on the director when his leading man Martin Sheen—who Coppola rode harder than anyone—suffered a heart attack. Seeking to bring out the darkness within Sheen, Coppola encouraged his drinking and did everything within his power to get Sheen to break away from his actor persona and begin portraying the character “honestly.”

This took a physical toll on the actor, and the heart attack nearly did him in for good. Had Sheen been unable to continue, the production would have ended, Coppola would have returned with half a film, and it’s likely we would never have seen Apocalypse Now. Luckily, Sheen recovered over the following weeks and was able to complete his scenes in doctor-recommended non-strenuous conditions.^[8]

2 Scream (1996)

Director Wes Craven set a new precedent for horror with his meta-slasher Scream, simultaneously reaffirming and sending up the tropes audiences had come to expect. Knife-wielding Ghostface descends on Woodsboro to carve up a group of teens, and while there is a lot of stabbing and blood onscreen, there was almost a whole lot more.

During the film’s climax, in which the killer is revealed to be Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) as he launches a final assault on Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and her friends, Ulrich took a pretty serious hit for real.

In the film’s DVD commentary, Craven explains that when Campbell’s stunt double stabbed Ulrich with the tip of an umbrella, she missed her mark, going wide of the actor’s protective undervest and lancing him in the precise location where he had open heart surgery as a child. While this could have been a fatal blow, Ulrich walked away (mostly) unscathed, with a whole lot of pain to show for it. Never one to waste good footage, Craven left the shot in the final cut, meaning Billy’s reaction to being stabbed is the real deal.^[9]

1 Cast Away (2000)

The movie that won Tom Hanks his fourth Golden Globe, Robert Zemeckis’s Cast Away, challenged the actor to work for the better part of an entire movie by himself. Stranded on a desert island, Hanks’s FedEx analyst Chuck Noland is thrown into survival mode and must fend for himself and try not to go mad while waiting years for rescue.

Filmed on the Fijian island of Monuriki, Hanks was keen to get stuck in with a bit of method acting, clambering around on a real island beach and attempting the things his character was struggling with—building shelter, making fire—by hand. But this didn’t come without consequences.

A cut on his knee led to a staph infection that put Hanks in the hospital for three days and kept him away from shooting for several weeks. No minor thing, staph infections can cause sepsis, with the body’s blood pressure dropping to a life-threateningly low level. Despite coming closer to death and disaster than he or anyone else might have liked, Hanks used the downtime to work with Zemeckis on rewriting certain pages, gaining a rare bit of adjustment and reconfiguration time during a long shoot.^[10]