The president of Atlanta-based Tyler Perry Studios died Friday evening 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 normal supervisor, had died.

“We’re extremely saddened by the passing of our pricey buddy Steve Mensch,” the studio mentioned in a press release. “Steve was a cherished member of our staff for greater than eight years and well-beloved locally of Atlanta. It’s onerous to think about not seeing him smiling all through the halls. We are going to miss him dearly. Our coronary heart goes out to his household as all of us ship them our prayers.”

The crash occurred in Homosassa, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of Tampa. Pictures from the scene present the aircraft having come to relaxation the wrong way up on a highway. The Federal Aviation Administration and the Nationwide Transportation Security Board are investigating.

The one-engine Vans RV-12IS was registered to Mensch at his dwelling handle within the Atlanta suburb of Fayetteville, in line with FAA data.

Mensch helped advocate for and keep Georgia‘s movie tax credit score of greater than $1 billion a 12 months. These lavish subsidies have made Georgia one of the vital lively locations within the United States for movie and tv manufacturing.

Mensch received into the film enterprise when he began working for Characteristic Methods, which supplies tools for the film trade. 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, informed The Atlanta Journal-Structure that Mensch helped market the state earlier than the 1996 Summer time Olympics in Atlanta and helped launch the Georgia Manufacturing Partnership, an leisure trade lobbying group.

“He was attempting to formulate the imaginative and prescient for {the marketplace} earlier than the Olympics and needed a assume tank of individuals locally to make Georgia aggressive,” Reitz mentioned. “He was an necessary determine within the our development to grow to be a powerful movie and TV market.”

After a 12 months serving to plan and construct an enormous studio in China and temporary 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 (135 hectares) of a former Military 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 about an largely Black and all-female World Warfare II battalion. The movie was shot on the Atlanta studio.

Mensch is survived by his spouse, Danila, and three kids.