A four-legged co-star still gets Brad Pitt emotional while filming
Brad Pitt is opening up about sharing the screen with his canine co-star in Heart of the Beast — and he’s got thoughts you’ll want to hear.
Onstage at the San Sebastián Film Festival, Brad Pitt walked through how he and the trainers turned every shooting day into “play” for his German Shepherd co-star, Uber, on Heart of the Beast — and how the dog’s off-script instincts kept making the final cut. Pitt called the experience “really moving,” praising Uber’s expressions and in-the-moment choices.
“We tried to make every day a play day for him. There were times he would do things that were just amazing that were not in the script that you see in the film, and his expressions still really move me,”
Filmed in New Zealand, the shoot sounded as rugged as the movie ’s backdrop. Pitt said the rough conditions forged a kind of field-camp camaraderie with the crew — and that sharing it with a “beautiful beast” added something he hadn’t felt before.
“Being out there with this beautiful beast was pretty special… it was really kind of beautiful,”
He painted a picture of long, spartan days built around the work, not the comforts.
“We’re out in this beautiful location. We’re wet, we’re cold, 12 hours a day. We don’t have trailers. We’re sitting out on logs, but everyone’s kind of up for the task,”
Pitt added that Uber doubled as a morale officer. The second the dog padded onto set, he said, the energy lifted — a noticeable jolt that kept spirits high through the cold and rain.
Indie energy
Pitt, who’s also producing Heart of the Beast via his Plan B banner, used the festival stop to talk up the state of independent filmmaking. He said today’s distribution paths are pulling bigger audiences toward creator-driven stories, creating a climate he feels rivals the creatively electric ’90s.
Director David Ayer echoed him, pointing to YouTube and other digital platforms as the new pipeline feeding fresh voices into features — spaces that used to sit outside the studio track now serving as real incubators. Heart of the Beast is set to open September 25, 2026 .