Star Wars: Force Awakens production company pleads guilty over Harrison Ford accident

A production company has pleaded guilty to two breaches of health and safety legislation stemming from an accident on the set of Star Wars: The Force Awakens that broke Harrison Ford’s leg.

The actor, who reprised his role as Han Solo in the blockbuster film, was injured on the film’s set at Pinewood Studios near London in June 2014 when a hydraulic metal door on the Millennium Falcon fell and shattered his leg.

During a hearing at Milton Keynes Magistrates’ Court in Britain on Thursday, prosecutor Andrew Marshall said the door “could have killed somebody” had an emergency stop button not been hit, The Guardian reports. A spokesman for Britain’s Health and Safety Executive said the power of the door’s drive system was “comparable to the weight of a small car.”

Foodles Production Ltd., a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Co., will be sentenced next month. A lawyer for the company said that while Foodles pleaded guilty, it would contest the level of risk involved.

The shooting schedule on The Force Awakens was shifted after Ford’s accident to allow him time to recover. “I knew that my leg was likely broken, and I didn’t know what other injuries there were,” Ford later told EW. “I was mostly concerned about the long ambulance ride to London.”

The Force Awakens was released in December 2015 and has since taken in more than $2 billion at the worldwide box office. Its follow-up, the Rian Johnson-directed Episode VIII, arrives on Dec. 15, 2017.