The president of Atlanta-based Tyler Perry Studios died Friday night time 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 common supervisor, had died.
“We are extremely saddened by the passing of our pricey buddy Steve Mensch,” the studio stated in a press release. “Steve was a cherished member of our workforce for greater than eight years and well-beloved in the neighborhood of Atlanta. It’s laborious to think about not seeing him smiling all through the halls. We will miss him dearly. Our coronary heart goes out to his household as all of us ship them our prayers.”
Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles by way of AP
The crash occurred in Homosassa, about 60 miles north of Tampa. Photos from the scene present the aircraft having come to relaxation the wrong way up on a street. The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating.
The single-engine Vans RV-12IS was registered to Mensch at his house tackle within the Atlanta suburb of Fayetteville, in response to FAA data.
In a publish to Instagram Saturday night, Perry wrote: “I’ve been attempting to grasp this tragedy all day—what went unsuitable with that aircraft. Steve beloved flying, and he beloved that aircraft; he took a lot delight in it. Steve Mensch was actually a sort soul and an excellent chief on the studio. We all adored him and are devastated that he is gone. I’m praying for his household as all of us attempt to make sense of this heartbreak.”
Mensch helped advocate for and preserve Georgia’s film tax credit of greater than $1 billion a yr. Those lavish subsidies have made Georgia one of the crucial lively locations within the United States for movie and tv manufacturing.
Mensch obtained into the film enterprise when he began working for Feature Systems, which gives tools for the film business. He was employed by Atlanta-based Turner Broadcasting to run its studio operations, later turning into director of strategic manufacturing partnerships. It was there that he started to foyer state authorities for extra help to film and tv manufacturing.
Ric Reitz, an actor who additionally helped create the tax credit, advised The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Mensch helped market the state earlier than the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta and helped launch the Georgia Production Partnership, an leisure business lobbying group.
“He was attempting to formulate the imaginative and prescient for {the marketplace} earlier than the Olympics and wished a assume tank of individuals in the neighborhood to make Georgia aggressive,” Reitz stated. “He was an essential determine within the our progress to develop into a powerful movie and TV market.”
After a yr serving to plan and construct an enormous studio in China and transient 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 of a former Army base in southern Atlanta that Perry acquired in 2015.
Mensch died on the identical day that Perry launched “The Six Triple Eight,” a conflict drama a few largely Black and all-female World War II battalion. The movie was shot on the Atlanta studio.
Mensch is survived by his spouse, Danila, and three youngsters.
