The president of Atlanta-based Tyler Perry Studios died Friday night when the small plane he was piloting crashed on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
The studio confirmed on Saturday that Steve Mensch, its 62-year-old president and general manager, had died.
“We are incredibly saddened by the passing of our dear friend Steve Mensch,” the studio said in a statement. “Steve was a cherished member of our team for more than eight years and well-beloved in the community of Atlanta. It’s hard to imagine not seeing him smiling throughout the halls. We will miss him dearly. Our heart goes out to his family as we all send them our prayers.”
The crash happened in Homosassa, about 60 miles (100km) north of Tampa. Photos from the scene show the plane having come to rest upside down on a road. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are investigating.
The single-engine Vans RV-12IS was registered to Mensch at his home address in the Atlanta suburb of Fayetteville, according to FAA records.
Mensch helped advocate for and maintain Georgia’s film tax credit of more than $1bn a year. Those lavish subsidies have made Georgia one of the most active places in the US for film and television production.
Mensch got into the movie business when he started working for Feature Systems, which provides equipment for the movie industry. He was hired by Atlanta-based Turner Broadcasting to run its studio operations, later becoming director of strategic production partnerships. It was there that he began to lobby state government for more aid to movie and television production.
Ric Reitz, an actor who also helped create the tax credits, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Mensch helped market the state before the 1996 summer Olympics in Atlanta and helped launch the Georgia Production Partnership, an entertainment industry lobbying group.
“He was trying to formulate the vision for the marketplace before the Olympics and wanted a thinktank of people in the community to make Georgia competitive,” Reitz said. “He was an important figure in the our growth to become a strong film and TV market.”
After a year helping plan and build a giant studio in China and brief stint helping to open Third Rail Studios in suburban Atlanta, Perry hired Mensch to help create and run his namesake studio in 2016. The studio sprawls across 330 acres (135 hectares) of a former army base in southern Atlanta that Perry acquired in 2015.
Mensch died on the same day that Perry released The Six Triple Eight, a war drama about an mostly Black and all-female second world war battalion. The film was shot at the Atlanta studio.
Mensch is survived by his wife, Danila, and three children.
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