The cast and crew of Deadpool 2, and indeed the wider film industry at large, were left in a state of shock on Monday afternoon following the sudden death of stuntwoman Joi “SJ” Harris in Vancouver, Canada, who was killed when an on-set motorcycle stunt went horribly, horribly wrong.
Ryan Reynolds, a Vancouver native and the title star of David Leitch’s 2018 sequel, expressed his condolences in a heartfelt statement, stating that Joi’s passing had left him “heartbroken, shocked and devastated.” It’s believed that Joi Harris, an experienced road racer, was doubling for Domino (Zazie Beetz) at the time of the accident, and came off her motorcycle after multiple takes of the same scene. Police are still investigating whether this is due to human error or some as-yet-unidentified technical fault, though Deadline now has some more details on the situation.
According to them, Harris had only recently come on board the sequel after “it was realized that they needed a different stunt performer for the production.” In fact, she’d only been working on the film for several days before the accident and though the person she replaced had used a helmet for the stunt, the crew didn’t have time to make one for Harris because she joined on such short notice.
Furthermore, Deadline is also reporting that Fox is ready to fire back up production on the pic, with shooting set to resume this morning (Wednesday). As such, we fully expect the sequel to hit its release date of June 1st, despite some initial worries that it may be delayed. As we mentioned above, investigations are still underway to determine the exact cause of the accident, but they won’t interfere with anything.
More on the situation is sure to spill out over the coming days and weeks and once it does, we’ll let you know. In the meantime, though, it looks like everything is back on track in terms of production and Deadpool 2 will continue shooting in Vancouver ahead of its release next year.
