'Rust' shooting: New report details Alec Baldwin film's low budget, armorer maintains innocence

Producers on Rust, including Alec Baldwin, have come under fire over reports of chaotic working conditions in the wake of Halyna Hutchins's death. The Hollywood Reporter obtained a draft of the production budget which sheds light on where money was allocated on the independent Western movie.

Baldwin was set to earn $150,000 as lead actor and $100,000 as producer, according to the new report. Hutchins, an up-and-coming cinematographer, would have earned $48,945, while armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, one of two people at the center of the investigation, was set to be paid $7,913. Producers budgeted $7,469 for "armorer crew," $17,500 for the rental of weapons and $5,000 for rounds. Dave Halls, first assistant director who handed the prop gun to Baldwin, was to earn $52,830. While the draft confirms the low-budget nature of the film, which was slated to cost $7,279,305, experts tell THR the numbers are not unusual. 

Producers budgeted $650,000 to pay themselves and there were six in total including Baldwin. A source close to the production tells THR "that the producers deferred their fees and had not yet collected them at the time the production shut down, but offered no substantiation." 

According to the report, $350,000 was earmarked as a contingency in case anything went wrong — but those involved may need more than that if Hutchins's husband sues for wrongful death.

Hutchins was killed on Oct. 21 when Baldwin accidentally fired a prop gun containing a live round during rehearsal. Matthew Hutchins, the late husband of the filmmaker, hired a law firm that specializes in personal injury and wrongful-death suits, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Lawyers for Gutierrez-Reed, who was responsible for all guns on set, are doubling down their theory "sabotage" could have played a role in the fatal shooting. 

"Hannah Gutierrez Reed would like to add a few points to the continuing narrative on the tragic events surrounding the shooting on the Rust set. First, Hannah was incredibly safety conscious and took her job very seriously from the moment she started on October 4th," attorney Jason Bowles tells Yahoo Entertainment in a statement. "She did firearms training for the actors as well as Mr. Baldwin, she fought for more training days and she regularly emphasized to never point a firearm at a person. 

"Never in a million years did Hannah think that live rounds could have been in the 'dummy' round box. Who put those in there and why is the central question. Hannah kept guns locked up, including throughout lunch on the day in question, and she instructed her department to watch the cart containing the guns when she was pulled away for her other duties or on a lunch break," the statement continues. "Hannah did everything in her power to ensure a safe set. She inspected the rounds that she loaded into the firearms that day. She always inspected the rounds. She did again right before handing the firearm to Mr. Halls, by spinning the cylinder and showing him all of the rounds and then handing him the firearm. No one could have anticipated or thought that someone would introduce live rounds into this set."

Six members of the camera crew walked off set earlier on Oct. 21 over safety and financial issues. Rust costume designer Terese Magpale Davis blasted them in a Facebook post, calling them "jerks." Baldwin shared the lengthy message on his social media page.

"I'm so sick of this narrative," Davis wrote. "I worked on this movie. The story being spun of us being overworked and surrounded by unsafe, chaotic conditions are bulls***."

Hilaria Baldwin pleads with media for family privacy after Rust shooting:

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