The president of Atlanta-based Tyler Perry Studios died Friday evening when the small aircraft he was piloting crashed on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
The studio confirmed on Saturday that Steve Mensch, its 62-year-old president and normal supervisor, had died.
“We’re extremely saddened by the passing of our pricey good friend Steve Mensch,” the studio mentioned in an announcement. “Steve was a cherished member of our workforce for greater than eight years and well-beloved in the neighborhood of Atlanta. It’s exhausting to think about not seeing him smiling all through the halls. We are going to miss him dearly. Our coronary heart goes out to his household as all of us ship them our prayers.”
The crash occurred in Homosassa, about 60 miles (100km) north of Tampa. Pictures from the scene present the aircraft having come to relaxation the other way up on a highway. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Nationwide Transportation Security Board (NTSB) are investigating.
The only-engine Vans RV-12IS was registered to Mensch at his residence handle within the Atlanta suburb of Fayetteville, in line with FAA information.
Mensch helped advocate for and preserve Georgia’s movie tax credit score of greater than $1bn a 12 months. These lavish subsidies have made Georgia one of the crucial energetic locations within the US for movie and tv manufacturing.
Mensch obtained into the film enterprise when he began working for Function Techniques, which supplies gear for the film business. He was employed by Atlanta-based Turner Broadcasting to run its studio operations, later changing into director of strategic manufacturing partnerships. It was there that he started to foyer state authorities for extra assist to film and tv manufacturing.
Ric Reitz, an actor who additionally helped create the tax credit, instructed the Atlanta Journal-Structure that Mensch helped market the state earlier than the 1996 summer season Olympics in Atlanta and helped launch the Georgia Manufacturing Partnership, an leisure business lobbying group.
“He was making an attempt to formulate the imaginative and prescient for {the marketplace} earlier than the Olympics and wished a thinktank of individuals in the neighborhood to make Georgia aggressive,” Reitz mentioned. “He was an essential determine within the our progress to grow to be a robust movie and TV market.”
After a 12 months serving to plan and construct an enormous studio in China and temporary stint serving to to open Third Rail Studios in suburban Atlanta, Perry employed Mensch to assist create and run his namesake studio in 2016. The studio sprawls throughout 330 acres (135 hectares) of a former military base in southern Atlanta that Perry acquired in 2015.
Mensch died on the identical day that Perry launched The Six Triple Eight, a struggle drama about an largely Black and all-female second world struggle battalion. The movie was shot on the Atlanta studio.
Mensch is survived by his spouse, Danila, and three kids.
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