There are a lot of questions and very few answers surrounding the death of television producer Kevin Turen. The producer of Euphoria and The Idol suffered some sort of medical emergency while behind the wheel of his Tesla. And while he was rushed to a hospital as quickly as possible, he was pronounced dead there. He was only 44 years old.
According to TMZ, Kevin Turen was driving his 10-year-old son home from a tennis tournament when this unknown medical emergency took place. The car was apparently running in its self-driving “autopilot” mode. This would have meant the car continued to run itself while the medical emergency was taking place. The mode isn’t meant to run entirely without operator oversight but it seems Turen was unable to drive once he was in distress.
While the self-driving mode in Tesla vehicles has been implicated in more than one car accident, one wonders if it may have prevented a serious one that could have also injured the child when the operator was incapacitated. The vehicle certainly would have behaved differently if Turen had been actively driving when this happened, and that could have resulted in a crash. Turen’s son was able to navigate the car to the side of the road himself, where he called 911.
Turen’s family is insisting that drugs or alcohol were not involved in his death, but an official cause of death has not been determined at this point. At only 44 Turen was quite young and no underlying health conditions that would have caused this have been reported, though it's certainly possible that there was some undiagnosed issue that he wasn't yet aware of.
Turen’s biggest success as a producer was undoubtedly the HBO hit Euphoria. Most recently Turen produced the short-lived The Idol series for HBO. He produced projects on the big screen as well. He produced X and its follow-up Pearl as well as the Andrew Garfield indie drama 99 Homes and Nicolas Cage meta-comedy The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.
He had several projects in various stages of development, including MaXXine, the third film in the X trilogy. He was also an executive producer on WB’s planned Green Lantern Corps movie prior the the DCU reboot under James Gunn. That project has never been officially canceled. It’s unclear if he was involved in the new Lanterns series that was announced as part of the new DCU's Gods and Monsters cinematic universe launch.
Death is always tragic, but perhaps it’s even tougher when it is so unexpected. He was reportedly quite the family man, so his family is obviously devastated. Professionally he likely had decades of film and TV projects ahead of him. Our thoughts are with Kevin Turen's friends and family during this difficult time.
