David Ayer built a career on things that move fast and hit hard — The Beekeeper, Bright, Suicide Squad. His new film asks a man and a dog to walk out of a mountain range without dying, and that turned out to be the hardest shoot of his life.
Heart of the Beast stars Brad Pitt as James Belmont, a Special Forces officer stranded deep in the Alaskan wilderness after a plane crash, alongside his combat dog Odin. Paramount’s synopsis frames it as a brutal fight against the elements. Ayer, speaking to Polygon for its 2026 fall preview, frames it as something closer to a love story about spiritual endurance.
The Alaska on screen is actually New Zealand. Principal photography ran from March 3 to May 15, 2025, based out of Queenstown, and the production pushed far past the road network into the Southern Alps on the South Island. Crews helicoptered into boulder fields, landed at an angle, unloaded gear and shot. Some of those valleys had never been filmed before; Ayer says the team secured permission from Maori elders who controlled areas effectively sealed off from the world.
The cost of that scenery landed squarely on his lead actor.
“I think he was probably hypothermic the whole time,” Ayer told Polygon. “He’s just sitting there on set freezing and shaking. I’m like, ‘Hey, you should go to the trailer and warm up.’ He’s like, ‘Nah, I’ll just have to get cold again.'”
Temperatures never dropped below freezing, Ayer clarified. The problem was rain and immersion — glacier melt, and far more water work than anyone had budgeted for. “There wasn’t much comfort in the process,” he said.
Then there is the other lead. Odin is played by a dog actor named Uber, and Pitt got involved early enough to bond with the animal and learn handler technique. On set, a large part of his job was managing a scene partner who might break eye line or wander off after bees.
- Director: David Ayer, from a screenplay by Cameron Alexander
- Cast: Brad Pitt, J.K. Simmons, Anna Lambe, and Uber as Odin
- Runtime: 101 minutes
- Studio: Paramount Pictures
Ayer describes the film as an evolution rather than a detour. There is still action, including a military component, but the wilderness sequences were the genuinely new problem. “You read the script — and maybe I should have read it a little more carefully — and you’re like, ‘How the hell am I going to do that?'” he said. The craft challenge underneath it is simpler and stranger: one actor talks, the other does not.
Heart of the Beast has been programmed in a non-competition slot at the 74th San Sebastian International Film Festival. It reaches theaters on September 25, 2026.
