Mark Hamill and Wife Marilou’s Doc Shows ‘Devastating’ Impact of L.A. Fires (Exclusive)

Mark Hamill and his wife Marilou are stepping behind the camera for a cause close to their hearts. 

The Hamills, who have lived in the Big Rock neighborhood in Malibu, Calif., since 1978, are executive producing the new documentary Big Rock Burning. The Star Wars actor married Marilou in their Big Rock home and raised their three children there, but when the Los Angeles wildfires fires began rolling in January 2025, they reluctantly decided to leave. 

“I had planned to stay, and I was really angry when we finally left that I didn’t stay,” Marilou, who is well-versed in fire safety and had been planning for a tragedy like this, tells PEOPLE. “After a few days, I think I thought, ‘Well, I’m kind of glad I didn’t.’ Just because, I wasn’t worried about dying. I was more worried and thankful that I didn’t breathe all those toxins.”

Before leaving, the couple activated their fire system which uses water from their pool to spray “three to 500 gallons a minute over the whole property.”

That effort not only saved their home, but likely helped keep another one standing as well. 

“Nearly every home around us burned, but one,” Marilou says. “And that home was probably saved by our fire system, the way the wind blew the water on their house from our fire system.”

Though the structure of their home is still standing, it’s not livable, and the couple has yet to return to Big Rock more than seven months later.

“The house survived, but the downside is that it’s toxic with chemicals,” Mark says. 

While they’re not sure when, the couple hopes to return to the neighborhood they’ve called home for nearly five decades. 

“I’ve looked at houses where we’re living now in the Los Feliz area, but ideally, we want to go back because we got married there. We raised our kids there. It’s a very, very special property,” Marilou says. “And again, I’m so thankful and grateful that our house survived, but I just didn’t realize the ramifications of it.”

While their community continues to reel from the devastating impact of the fires, the Hamills have teamed up with their neighbor, director David Goldblum, in support of his film Big Rock Burning, which tells the stories of several residents who were “left to face the fires alone,” per the opening credits of the film, and includes devastating footage of the rubble left where homes once stood. 

The documentary’s focus is largely how Big Rock’s residents feel their local government was negligent in their preparation for the natural disaster. And, once the fires made it to their neighborhood, they say there was no emergency response as the area was considered too dangerous.

In the days following the outbreak of the fire, messages continued firing off in a community WhatsApp group updating fellow neighbors on the status of their homes and brainstorming ways to help. Goldblum knew he had to start filming.

“The common thread that I kept hearing was ‘No help came for us. What happened? We did this all ourselves. We were fighting with garden hoses,’ ” Goldblum, who lost his home in the fires, tells PEOPLE.  “And people just kept saying, ‘We have to get our stories out there.’ ”

The L.A. County Fire Department did not respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

“It was three days after the fires and I sent a text message to the group and I said, ‘I know this is raw. I know this is early, but I know we all want our stories to get out there. So if we want to do this, I can shepherd it,’ ” Goldblum continues.  “And within an hour, I think I had 50 people reach out to me. And that was the beginning. I mean, it was three days after the fire and within less than a week, I was sneaking a cameraman past the National Guard checkpoints and filming every day.”

Some residents, like Arno Koch, stayed back to try and fight the fires on their own with hoses and buckets. After sitting vigil by his home into the night and putting out “hot spot[s]” as they surfaced, Koch went to check on others’ homes to report back what he saw. While out on patrol, his own home went up in flames. 

“I took a last picture of my burning house and said ‘Okay I want to see my family now,’ ” he says. 

Big Rock Burning, which has a producing team that includes Julie Parker Benello, James Costa and executive producer Ricki Lake, will have an exclusive preview screening hosted by the Malibu Film Society and the City of Malibu on Aug. 29 at Malibu City Hall and will be followed by an Oscar-qualifying theatrical run from Sept. 12-18 at the Laemmle in Santa Monica. 

“I’m just hoping that people can see it, and it does some good for maybe people planning, communities planning, for a disaster like that so we don’t have the same terrible results,” Marilou says of the film. “It’s going to be a while before our neighborhood’s back, and it’s devastating. It’s just really devastating. So I hope people get a chance to see it.”