An incident at Pinewood Studios during the shoot of The Little Mermaid live-action film, has left a model maker injured into early retirement.
Deadline reports that Christine Overs, a special effects practical artist, took a fall when a section of the set she was on tipped over in 2020. The injuries sustained resulted in a broken wrist on the set of the Disney film that required five steel pins fitted and a ‘fixator’ up to their elbow to stabilize the arm. Sandcastle Pictures, the company that Disney contracted to make The Little Mermaid, has confirmed their liability but are contesting how much Overs is due.
The 74-year-old model maker, who worked on films such as the original Dune, Aliens, and various Jim Henson projects, had planned to work into her 80’s before the accident. Overs and her lawyers claim she has sustained “ongoing wrist pain,” and had been left to deal with “substantial level of disability” to the point where she she can’t use her hands to the degree she could before the injury.
Disney has not given a comment in response to the lawyer’s accusation of Sandcastle failing to “provide any adequate access to the set, which led to the claimant falling from a makeshift polystyrene step and injuring her wrist.”. No industry is safe and big corporations aren’t your friend. Incidents like this prove that movements are necessary for huge studios to see people as humans worthy of access to vital care and essential protections on set and creating the projects these studios thrive on.
This story which includes mention of a major studio project, was published during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of writers and actors currently on strike, the films and TV talked about here by fans wouldn’t exist.
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