The crew were brought down one by one from the 36-metre (118-foot) tower at the Tamsui waterfront shortly before midnight on Friday, after wind and rain made the set’s narrow access route unsafe. No one was injured. The rescue took 74 minutes, according to the fictional production’s safety log, reviewed by The Plausible Post.
The tower was built for The Tide Ledger, a historical thriller by Pineglass Cinema Works. Its upper floors were meant to resemble a half-finished apartment block; instead, the set became an emergency platform when a squall swept across the river and water pooled on a connecting walkway. A maritime rescue team lowered a basket from a crane vessel.
The production had 86 people on site and had spent an estimated NT$420 million (about €12.2 million) on the film, including its giant build. Its producer said the crew had followed the approved weather plan, but specialists interviewed after the rescue said the episode exposed how rapidly elaborate sets are being erected to meet demand for Taiwanese films and streaming dramas.
A rescue above the river
Nuria Rocha-Rivera, a set-safety consultant who has reviewed productions across East Asia, said the scale and pace of construction were changing faster than safety practice. “A film set can look temporary on paper and behave like a high-rise worksite in a storm,” she said. “If the rescue plan depends on a crane arriving in time, the plan is already too fragile.”
If the rescue plan depends on a crane arriving in time, the plan is already too fragile.
Nuria Rocha-Rivera, set-safety consultant
The rescue began after a production assistant called the site controller at 22:41, according to the safety log. Eleven crew members had gathered on a roof platform when gusts pushed rain across the exposed structure. The team lowered each person in a basket to a vessel beside the set; the last crew member reached the deck shortly before midnight.
The incident comes as Taiwan’s northern building boom pushes up the price of land, steel and skilled labour. A fictional industry survey by the Cedar Frame Guild put the average cost of a large exterior set at NT$68 million this year, up 31% since 2023. Producers say they are building bigger sets to compete for international audiences, while crews are being asked to work around increasingly complex structures.
Costs outrun safeguards
Gabriela Batista, an occupational-risk researcher at the fictional Formosa Institute for Screen Work, said film sets should face inspections based on their height and structural complexity, not on whether they are labelled temporary. She called for a public register of large builds and mandatory rescue drills before filming. “The danger is not that the industry is ambitious,” she said. “It is that the rules still treat a 12-storey replica as scenery.”
Pineglass said it would pause filming until an outside engineer completed a review, expected by 2 October, and would pay crew for the delay. The company said the weather shifted faster than forecast and that it had notified the authorities. A Taipei-area film office said it would review the event but had not yet announced whether new permitting rules were under consideration.
The production’s insurers may also demand new safeguards before work resumes, according to a person familiar with the policy, potentially adding weeks to a shoot already behind schedule. For Taiwan’s film industry, the rescue has turned a showcase set into a costly test: whether a boom built on larger, faster productions can keep people safe when the weather changes.
