Naman Shrestha
With the acclaimed director David Ayer at the helm, ‘Heart of the Beast’ is a survival thriller movie that stars Brad Pitt as James Belmont, a retired Special Forces soldier. While he is on a flight with his beloved yet traumatized combat German Shepherd, Odin, the seaplane suddenly crashes, leaving James stranded in the dangerous Alaskan wilderness with his dog. Although they somehow survive the harrowing incident, the two must find a way to endure the harsh natural elements surrounding them. As James and Odin traverse the grueling and wild terrains of Alaska, they are also forced to put up a fight against several animals they encounter along the way. The harsh landscape of the Alaskan wilderness serves as both a driving force and an additional character in the action–adventure drama, highlighting the special bond between a broken man and his loyal best friend.
Heart of the Beast Filming Locations
Production on ‘Heart of the Beast’ was conducted entirely in New Zealand, particularly in the regions of Otago and Fiordland. Principal photography for the Brad Pitt starrer reportedly commenced around early March 2025 and continued for more than two months before wrapping up around mid-May of the same year. One of the crew members in the camera department, Sassafraz Marshall-Johnson, recounted her experience on set, stating, “This film pushed me harder than anything I’ve worked on and I’m so proud to have been part of it. To sit in the theatre and watch the shots back, knowing how hard we worked, the most fulfilling feeling career wise yet.”
Otago, New Zealand
Located in the southern portion of New Zealand’s South Island, the region of Otago served as a prominent production location for ‘Heart of the Beast.’ Despite the fact that the film is set in Alaska, the cast and crew members set up camp in different wooded and forest areas across Otago, which doubled as the Alaskan wilderness. To be specific, Queenstown is where many pivotal sequences were filmed, with multiple spots in and around the town of Glenorchy, which is located at the northern end of Lake Wakatipu, also being transformed into film sets.
The Remarkables mountain range features in the backdrop of several exterior shots as Brad Pitt’s character hikes across the Alaskan wilderness. The shores of Lake Wakatipu and the area of Kinloch also make multiple appearances in the survival film. From what we can tell, the filming unit also took over a few areas of the Mount Aspiring National Park, situated in the Southern Alps and a part of the Te Wahipounamu World Heritage Site.
Fiordland, New Zealand
In the region of Fiordland, the production team of ‘Heart of the Beast’ also set up camp at another Te Wahipounamu World Heritage Site — Fiordland National Park — as they made the most of the rugged hilly terrain of Milford Sound. During a conversation with GQ, the filmmaker David Ayer spoke in detail about taping the entire project in New Zealand and the challenges associated with it. He revealed, “We shot it in New Zealand, predominantly on the South Island, which is stunning and incredible. For all intents and purposes it’s Alaska; you can’t tell the difference. Being up there in the glaciers, no one’s ever filmed before, and it took a lot of liaising with the New Zealand government and conservationist people to show them that we were going to be good citizens and tread really lightly on what is sacred land.”
Sharing that there were times when there was hardly room to stand anywhere during the shoot, he added, “Then, how do we get a camera in there? How do we get our people in there? It was a deceiving script, because it’s a guy, it’s a dog — how hard can it be? But it feels huge. And you’re really building your own infrastructure. You’re getting into these deeply remote areas, and there was one location where we had to helicopter in and were limited to three loads of equipment. And there wasn’t even anywhere to stand! We took Brad and the dog in a helicopter and dropped them off on a ridge and just had them walking along and photographed that.”
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