By newsfirstusa 
ATLANTA — The president of Atlanta-based Tyler Perry Studios died Friday evening when the petite aircraft he used to be piloting crashed on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
The studio showed on Saturday that Steve Mensch, its 62-year-old president and common supervisor, 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 clash came about in Homosassa, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of Tampa. Footage from the scene display the aircraft having come to residue the other way up on a highway. The Federal Flying Management and the Nationwide Transportation Protection Board are investigating.
The only-engine Vehicles RV-12IS used to be registered to Mensch at his house cope with within the Atlanta suburb of Fayetteville, in keeping with FAA information.
Mensch helped suggest for and guard Georgia’s movie tax credit score of more than $1 billion a year. The ones brilliant subsidies have made Georgia one of the energetic playgrounds in the USA for movie and tv manufacturing.
Mensch were given into the film industry when he set to work for Quality Methods, which gives apparatus for the film trade. He used to be leased through Atlanta-based Turner Broadcasting to run its studio operations, after changing into director of strategic manufacturing partnerships. It used to be there that he started to foyer condition executive for extra backup to film and tv manufacturing.
Ric Reitz, an actor who additionally helped develop the tax credit, instructed The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Mensch helped marketplace the condition prior to the 1996 Summer time Olympics in Atlanta and helped forming the Georgia Manufacturing Partnership, an leisure trade lobbying crew.
“He was trying to formulate the vision for the marketplace before the Olympics and wanted a think tank of people in the community to make Georgia competitive,” Reitz mentioned. “He was an important figure in the our growth to become a strong film and TV market.”
Then a 12 months serving to plan and develop a vast studio in China and temporary stint serving to to detectable 3rd Rail Studios in suburban Atlanta. Perry leased Mensch to assistance develop and run his namesake studio in 2016. The studio sprawls throughout 330 acres (135 hectares) of a former Military bottom in southern Atlanta that Perry obtained in 2015.
Mensch died at the identical hour that Perry excepted “The Six Triple Eight,” a warfare drama about an most commonly Dull and all-female Global Struggle II battalion. The movie used to be shot on the Atlanta studio.
Mensch is survived through his spouse, Danila, and 3 kids.