Yes, horses have been hurt and killed during film productions throughout Hollywood’s history, though the protections in place today are dramatically better than they were decades ago. The worst abuses happened during the early era of Westerns and epic films, when there were essentially no rules governing how animals were treated on set. Modern productions use a combination of oversight, trained stunt horses, and digital effects to reduce the risk, but incidents still occur.
The Early Days Were Brutal
In the first several decades of filmmaking, horses were treated as disposable props. During Westerns, horses were routinely whipped, spurred, shot at, forced to jump through windows, and ridden through burning buildings. They were driven through raging rivers and forced to haul heavy loads in extreme heat. Directors wanted dramatic falls and didn’t much care how they got them.
One of the most notorious devices was the “Running W,” a type of tripwire attached to a horse’s legs. When triggered, it would yank the horse’s front legs out from under it at full gallop, sending the animal crashing to the ground. The falls looked spectacular on camera. They also broke legs and necks. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals eventually banned the Running W after its widespread abuse during the 1936 film The Charge of the Light Brigade.
Another device, the “tilt chute,” was a slippery platform that could be tilted upward to force a horse to slide off a cliff edge. During the 1939 film Jesse James, a horse was forced off a cliff into a raging river using this method and died. That single death became a turning point. It prompted the American Humane Association to secure legal authority to monitor the treatment of animals on film sets, a role the organization still holds today.
How Horses Are Protected Now
Since 1940, the American Humane Association (AHA) has had the right to be present on film and television sets where animals are used. Their representatives review scripts, observe filming, and can halt production if they believe an animal is being mistreated. When a production meets their standards, it earns the familiar “No Animals Were Harmed” end credit disclaimer.
Tripwires and tilt chutes are long gone. Modern horse falls are performed by specially trained stunt horses that have been taught to drop and roll on cue, landing on soft prepared ground. Protective padding is hidden under saddles and costumes. Breakaway props replace anything that could injure a horse on impact. And increasingly, productions avoid putting real horses in risky situations at all by using CGI, animatronic rigs, or mechanical horses that can simulate riding scenes without a live animal.
The System Isn’t Perfect
Despite these safeguards, horses have continued to die on productions. The most high-profile case in recent memory was HBO’s Luck, a horse racing drama that ran from 2011 to 2012. Multiple horses died during the show’s production, leading to its cancellation. The AHA conducted an investigation and determined that “no foul play” occurred. But the Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney who reviewed those findings rejected them, concluding the investigation was incomplete and that the AHA couldn’t be trusted to pursue the case due to its inherent conflict of interest. The AHA’s lead investigator had conducted his work by phone from out of state, never sought a search warrant for crucial toxicology results, and never interviewed key AHA staffers who had been working on set.
That case exposed a fundamental tension: the AHA is funded in part by the entertainment industry it monitors, which raises questions about how aggressively it can hold productions accountable. After Luck, the organization faced intense scrutiny and pledged reforms, but critics argue that self-policing by an industry-adjacent group will always have limits.
More recently, in 2023, a horse died on the set of Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. An independent necropsy confirmed the horse died of cardiac failure while being exercised before filming even began. A veterinarian and an AHA representative were both on site at the time. The horse had shown no prior health problems and was standing among 20 others before it collapsed. The animal supplier, The Devil’s Horsemen, had provided horses for major productions including Game of Thrones, and this was reportedly the first on-set animal fatality in the company’s 50-year history.
PETA responded by calling on all producers to stop using real horses entirely, pointing out that CGI, mechanical rigs, and other methods can achieve the same visual results without risk to living animals.
Why Real Horses Are Still Used
Given the risks, you might wonder why productions don’t just go fully digital. The short answer is that CGI horses still don’t look completely real in every situation, especially in close-up shots or scenes involving direct interaction with actors. A rider needs to physically move with a horse’s gait for the performance to feel authentic, and that’s hard to fake. Mechanical rigs can simulate some of this, but they have their own limitations in terms of range of motion and visual realism.
The trend is clearly moving toward less reliance on live horses, though. Visual effects technology improves every year, and audience expectations around animal welfare continue to rise. Many productions now use real horses only for calm, low-risk scenes like walking or standing, then switch to digital doubles for anything involving speed, falls, or battle sequences.
What “No Animals Were Harmed” Actually Means
That familiar end credit only covers what happens during filming itself. It doesn’t account for how animals are housed, transported, or trained before they arrive on set. It also doesn’t cover pre-production rehearsals or incidents that happen between takes. A horse could be injured during transport to a location or stressed by conditions in a holding area, and that wouldn’t necessarily affect the disclaimer. The phrase gives audiences some assurance, but it’s narrower in scope than most people assume.