New Zealand stands in for Alaska: Where Heart of the Beast was filmed
Heart of the Beast
The story is set in the Alaskan wilderness. The cameras were in Otago and Fiordland on New Zealand's South Island. "For all intents and purposes, it's Alaska," director David Ayer told GQ. "You can't tell the difference." Principal photography began in March 2025 and wrapped in May, with the entire location shoot taking place across the Queenstown, Central Otago and Fiordland regions.
Heart of the Beast — David Ayer's survival thriller starring Brad Pitt — follows Special Forces officer James Belmont and his combat dog Odin, stranded deep in the Alaskan wilderness after a catastrophic plane crash, forced into a brutal fight for survival against the elements.
J.K. Simmons and Anna Lambe complete the cast. The screenplay is by Cameron Alexander, produced by Pitt's Plan B Entertainment alongside Temple Hill Entertainment and Damien Chazelle and Olivia Hamilton's Wild Chickens Productions. Mauro Fiore — whose Avatar cinematography won the Oscar — is behind the camera. Notably, Pitt's co-star Odin is not a Hollywood dog. He is a New Zealand mountain rescue dog who brought his own ideas to the production.
The production's primary base was Queenstown, on the shores of Lake Wakatipu in Central Otago. In the trailer, Pitt's character is pulled from the lake — its deep blue glacial water, its surrounding peaks and its sheer scale giving the film its first and most persistent establishing image. Lake Wakatipu is one of New Zealand's most dramatic bodies of water, carved by glaciers into a Z-shape, its shores backed by the Remarkables mountain range.
The trailer shows Pitt trekking across the Remarkables and fishing along the stoney riverbanks near Glenorchy. In May 2025, GQ Magazine posted a cover shoot video showing Pitt riding a vintage motorbike through the Glenorchy area and cruising along Lake Wakatipu — the same landscapes that appear in the film.
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Production crews established a large base near Glenorchy — the small settlement of around 200 people at the northern end of Lake Wakatipu, gateway to Mount Aspiring National Park. Helicopters, boats and a seaplane were used to access filming locations across the region. Pitt was spotted shooting scenes near Kinloch on the western shore. Glenorchy's river flats, beech forests and mountain passes are familiar from the Lord of the Rings productions, which used the surrounding landscape for Isengard and Lothlórien. For Heart of the Beast, they become Alaska.
One location could only be reached by helicopter, with the production limited to three loads of equipment. Ayer described it in GQ: "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." Mount Aspiring National Park — 3,555 square kilometres of glacier-carved valleys, alpine lakes and peaks — provided the film's most genuinely inaccessible environments. There was barely anywhere to stand during those shoots, Ayer said. "I was operating the camera a lot. We're just in this rugged wilderness, with the intensity of it."
Milford Sound completed the location footprint — its sheer granite walls rising over 1,200 metres from the water, Mitre Peak reflected in the dark fiord, rainfall cascading off the cliffs in hundreds of temporary waterfalls.
Heart of the Beast opens in cinemas on September 25, 2026.
SOURCE
RNZ // rova // Wikipedia // IMDb // New Zealand Film Commission
CREDITS
© Paramount Pictures, Crave Films
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