Gregg Allman Sues To Halt Production On Biopic 'Midnight Rider'

Gregg Allman, after imploring director Randall Miller to halt production, has filed a lawsuit in an effort to stop progress on Midnight Rider.

Gregg Allman Sues To Stop ‘Midnight Rider’ Production

Midnight Rider is the in-production film based on Allman’s 2012 memoir My Cross to Bear catalogues his experience in the music industry with the Allman Brothers Band. Though Allman had initially given the project a green light, he started to have second thoughts after the death of the 28-year-old camera assistant Sarah Jones. Since Miller has shown no intention of giving up the project, Allman has filed a lawsuit.

Allman wants Unclaimed Freight Productions “to cease all efforts to make a motion picture based upon the life of Gregg Allman and/or his autobiography,” according to the filing. He is suing on grounds that the producers lost their rights to his biography by breaching stipulations outlined in the contract, which included keeping to a Feb. 28th principal photography start date and paying the rocker his total sum for the rights to his book, reported Rolling Stone.

“Through my representatives, I have objected to Defendants’ plan to proceed with the motion picture,” said Allman in an April 28 affidavit.

Back in February, while Midnight Rider was filming on train tracks in Georgia without a permit, a freight train charged down towards where crewmembers were setting up. As a result, Jones lost her life and six others were injured. After the tragic accident, production was halted and William Hurt, who was to play Allman, dropped out of the project.

Following the heart-wrenching incident, Allman penned a letter to Miller to stop work on the film. “I am writing to you as one human being to another, and appealing to you from my heart,” he wrote. “I am asking you from a personal perspective not to go forward. . . Your desires as a filmmaker should not outweigh your obligations as a human being,” he wrote. “I am asking you to do the right thing and to set aside your attempts to resume the production out of respect for Sarah, her family and the loss that all of us feel so deeply.”