The President of Atlanta is located Tyler Perry Studios died Friday evening when the small plane he was piloting crashed on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
The studio confirmed 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 beloved member of our team for more than eight years and much loved in the Atlanta community. It’s hard to imagine not seeing him smiling in the hallways. We will miss him dearly. Our hearts go out to his family as we send them all our prayers.”
Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles via AP
The crash happened in Homosassa, about 60 miles north of Tampa. Photos from the scene show the plane came to rest upside down on a road. The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating.
According to FAA records, the single-engine Vans RV-12IS was registered to Mensch at his home address in the Atlanta suburb of Fayetteville.
Mensch helped advocate for and sustain it Georgian Film Tax Credit of more than 1 billion dollars per year. These generous subsidies have made Georgia one of the most active places in the United States for film and television production.
Mensch entered the film industry when he started working for Feature Systems, which supplies equipment for the film industry. He was hired by Atlanta-based Turner Broadcasting to run studio operations and later became director of strategic production partnerships. It was there that he began lobbying the state government for greater support for film 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 lobby group.
“He was trying to set the vision for the market before the Olympics and wanted a think tank of community people to make Georgia competitive,” Reitz said. “He was an important figure in our growth to become a strong film and TV market.”
After a year spent helping plan and build a massive studio in China and a brief stint helping open Third Rail Studios in suburban Atlanta. Perry hired Mensch to help set up and run his eponymous studio in 2016. The studio spans 330 acres of a former Army base in south Atlanta that Perry acquired in 2015.
Mensch died the same day Perry released “The Six Triple Eight,” a war drama about a mostly black and all-female battalion of World War II. The film was shot in the studio in Atlanta.
Mensch is survived by his wife Danila and three children.
