French reality TV series “Dropped” will not see the light of the day after two helicopters collided mid-air over Argentina during filming on Monday, killing 10 people.
The head of production company Adventure Line Productions, Franck Firmin-Guion, made it official in a TF1 interview — the channel that the survival series was previously set to air on. The production company did not immediately respond to TheWrap‘s request for comment.
Eight of the dead were French national cast and crew members, two were Argentine pilots. The show was being filmed in the rugged mountains of the La Rioja province of the South American country.
Translated by Google, Firmin-Guion told Gilles Bouleau: “Several cameras rolled, including cameras on the ground. What we do know what happened there is that at 17:00 (local time), the two helicopters took off. In one of them there were three champions and a cameraman to film close-ups. In the other helicopter, a technical team that was filming the first helicopter. The two helicopters were to go [to] … the starting point of an event. It was a 20-minute ride, and a few moments after takeoff, one of the two helicopters veered off course and crashed into the other helicopter. [It] is a terrible air disaster.”
“All the conditions have been met. The two helicopters are type B3 Ecureuil, including specialized in mountainous situations. They belonged to the governor and were frequently used, so in good mechanical condition. [The pilots] — Roberto Abate and Carlos Castillo — were highly experienced, they had 30 years of experience, were flight instructors, military pilots. Furthermore, [there was] a logistics coordinator and security to deal with rotations of flights. This person had already produced the Swedish show, so he knew the terrain.”
Among the dead are champion sailor Florence Arthaud, Olympic gold medalist swimmer Camille Muffat and Olympic boxer Alexis Vastine.
“Apparently, the two helicopters collided as they were filming. There are no survivors,” provincial spokesman Horacio Alarcon said at the time.
Weather conditions were reportedly good.
“Dropped” followed eight sports stars being dropped into inhospitable environments for the survival-themed reality series.
Shooting began in late February in Ushuaia, at the southern tip of South America in the glacial landscape of Patagonia, and then moved to the mountainous La Rioja region.