Pittsburgh Arts, Regional Theatre, New Work, Producing, Copyright, Labor Unions,
New Products, Coping Skills, J-O-Bs...
Theatre industry news, University & School of Drama Announcements, plus occasional course support for
Carnegie Mellon School of Drama Faculty, Staff, Students, and Alumni.
CMU School of Drama
Monday, January 12, 2026
Disney Employee Struck by Prop Boulder at 'Indiana Jones' Stunt Show
variety.com: A Disney World Hollywood Studios employee was struck by a prop boulder during a showing of the “Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular!” stage show after the 400-pound rubber sphere became displaced from its track.
4 comments:
Emily R
said...
This just shows how dangerous a job in entertainment can be, wether your an actor or technician. The idea of putting on a show and making the audience believe that dangerous stunts or realistic fights are happening is just one of the ways that a sense of danger is inflicted upon the production. A show with no fights or stunts is already dangerous due to the amount of technical equipment in a space, so the addition of these things puts more risk on the actors to get injured during the performance. I have seen thing speifically about the Indiana Jones show and have watched the part with the boulder, and I honestly do know why they do it because of the reason this article is being written. I could not imagine a rubber ball bigger than me rolling down an arch faster than I could run. It just goes to say that safety should be the utmost priority of the production, no matter the number of stunts involved.
Its always terrible to hear about injuries and major accidents on movie and theatre sets. Prop gun mishaps, rigging issues, tripping hazards, etc. It scares me every time. Theatre and film is such an exciting, creative environment to work in, where everyone is trying to make it as amazing and grand as possible. But safety is such an important thing in the process, especially for these high achieving productions with huge sets and technical gear and 400-pound boulder props, apparently. The article is pretty vague about the crew member, which is to be expected. All i can hope is that they are treated well and compensated somehow for this. Its amazing that the crew member ran out to save the audience. I’ve also heard horror stories where injured crew members or actors are kept quiet, or large corporations pay to cover up accidents to keep their reputation. We can try our best to make sure injuries never happen on set, but when they inevitably do, steps should be taken to care for the injured, and make sure that accident never happens again.
This article was extremely disheartening. Injuries in the workplace are no joke. That is such a terrible way to be paralyzed or even killed. This event, and many others, prove how important safety and redundancy is. It is not only critical to have a preliminary safety plan in place, but also multiple backups in place. This is especially true when guests are at risk in addition to employees. On top of all that, the safety systems in place need to be checked/inspected very often. I am sure that Disney had some of these safety systems in place, so I wonder if it was a “freak accident” scenario where every single safeguard failed? Maybe it was just a case of not inspecting the safety systems regularly. Either way, I am interested to see how Disney will move forward. They are continuing to be in the spotlight for safety failures, since I remember them having some fire issues during another live event that drew lots of attention.
I saw the video on social media a few days ago and scrolled past without much of a second thought, as I didn’t realize the prop was four hundred pounds. It seems, at least from the camera perspective, that he saved quite of few audience members from disaster (and cynically speaking, he also saved his bosses’ bosses from quite a few lawsuits). I am relieved to hear that that element of the show will be modified by a team of people dedicated to safety, and I’m hoping a better backup procedure will be put in place to protect audience members and Disney workers. I’m a little stunned to hear that there are 12 backup performance procedures if something goes wrong, and yet this still happened the way it did. Why are there such protections for the actors and not for other individuals involved? Of course it's a good thing for the safety of the performance, let’s keep that energy for crew, audience, etc.
4 comments:
This just shows how dangerous a job in entertainment can be, wether your an actor or technician. The idea of putting on a show and making the audience believe that dangerous stunts or realistic fights are happening is just one of the ways that a sense of danger is inflicted upon the production. A show with no fights or stunts is already dangerous due to the amount of technical equipment in a space, so the addition of these things puts more risk on the actors to get injured during the performance. I have seen thing speifically about the Indiana Jones show and have watched the part with the boulder, and I honestly do know why they do it because of the reason this article is being written. I could not imagine a rubber ball bigger than me rolling down an arch faster than I could run. It just goes to say that safety should be the utmost priority of the production, no matter the number of stunts involved.
Its always terrible to hear about injuries and major accidents on movie and theatre sets. Prop gun mishaps, rigging issues, tripping hazards, etc. It scares me every time. Theatre and film is such an exciting, creative environment to work in, where everyone is trying to make it as amazing and grand as possible. But safety is such an important thing in the process, especially for these high achieving productions with huge sets and technical gear and 400-pound boulder props, apparently.
The article is pretty vague about the crew member, which is to be expected. All i can hope is that they are treated well and compensated somehow for this. Its amazing that the crew member ran out to save the audience. I’ve also heard horror stories where injured crew members or actors are kept quiet, or large corporations pay to cover up accidents to keep their reputation. We can try our best to make sure injuries never happen on set, but when they inevitably do, steps should be taken to care for the injured, and make sure that accident never happens again.
This article was extremely disheartening. Injuries in the workplace are no joke. That is such a terrible way to be paralyzed or even killed. This event, and many others, prove how important safety and redundancy is. It is not only critical to have a preliminary safety plan in place, but also multiple backups in place. This is especially true when guests are at risk in addition to employees. On top of all that, the safety systems in place need to be checked/inspected very often. I am sure that Disney had some of these safety systems in place, so I wonder if it was a “freak accident” scenario where every single safeguard failed? Maybe it was just a case of not inspecting the safety systems regularly. Either way, I am interested to see how Disney will move forward. They are continuing to be in the spotlight for safety failures, since I remember them having some fire issues during another live event that drew lots of attention.
I saw the video on social media a few days ago and scrolled past without much of a second thought, as I didn’t realize the prop was four hundred pounds. It seems, at least from the camera perspective, that he saved quite of few audience members from disaster (and cynically speaking, he also saved his bosses’ bosses from quite a few lawsuits). I am relieved to hear that that element of the show will be modified by a team of people dedicated to safety, and I’m hoping a better backup procedure will be put in place to protect audience members and Disney workers. I’m a little stunned to hear that there are 12 backup performance procedures if something goes wrong, and yet this still happened the way it did. Why are there such protections for the actors and not for other individuals involved? Of course it's a good thing for the safety of the performance, let’s keep that energy for crew, audience, etc.
Post a Comment