AceShowbiz -

William Hurt is distancing himself from "Midnight Rider", The Hollywood Reporter learns. The actor has dropped out of the project as production is scheduled to resume in June this year, just a few months after the fatal accident that killed a crew member and injured many others.

Hurt hasn't publicly commented on the tragic accident, but he allegedly described what happened in an email to a friend. In the correspondence obtained by LA Times, the 64-year-old actor said he had expressed his concerns about filming on train tracks but no one listened.

"I said, 'Sixty seconds is not enough time to get us off this bridge.' There was a communal pause. No one backed me up. Then, we ..... Just went ahead. I took off my shoes, got on the heavy, metal hospital bed and began preparing," he recalled. "We didn't have sixty seconds. We had less than thirty."

Hurt was initially set to play Gregg Allman in the biopic. The production was halted after camera assistant Sarah Jones, 27, was killed during an accident this February. She was hit by a train when the crew members were filming on a railroad above Altamaha River in Wayne County, Ga.

Now director Randall Miller is looking to move production to Los Angeles. "We have expressed our obvious concerns regarding this production starting again. We have demanded that they provide clearances from any and all governmental agencies and/or police agencies that are investigating this company and the individuals involved," said labor union IATSE.