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| Where Was Heart of the Beast Filmed? All New Zealand Shooting Locations Revealed. |
Heart of the Beast was filmed far from the Alaskan wilderness it depicts. David Ayer’s 2026 survival thriller used New Zealand’s South Island as its rugged stand-in for Alaska, with production moving through remote mountains, forests, rivers and fiords between 3 March and 15 May 2025. Some of the film’s most demanding sequences were shot in difficult-to-reach terrain, while Auckland Studios handled controlled interior and technical work.
The choice makes sense once you see what the production was trying to achieve. Rather than relying heavily on green screens, Ayer and cinematographer Mauro Fiore took the cast and crew into the landscape, using New Zealand’s cold alpine conditions to give James Belmont’s survival ordeal a physical edge. The result is an interesting bit of movie geography: Alaska on screen, New Zealand behind the camera.
Queenstown and Lake Wakatipu, Otago
Queenstown was the main production base for Heart of the Beast and provided one of the film’s most recognisable landscapes. Lake Wakatipu features prominently in the opening section after James Belmont’s seaplane crashes, with Brad Pitt’s character shown emerging from the freezing water.
The lake’s deep blue surface and enormous mountain backdrop give the sequence the sort of scale a survival film demands. It is also a rather spectacular place to stage an aircraft disaster, although presumably less relaxing for anyone hoping to spend the afternoon enjoying the scenery.
Queenstown itself supplied the production with access to the surrounding alpine environment while functioning as a practical base for the crew. Its position among the mountains made it particularly useful for a film that constantly needs to move between open water, rugged peaks and wilderness.
The Remarkables, Queenstown
The Remarkables mountain range supplied the severe alpine terrain used for scenes depicting Belmont’s struggle at higher elevations. The distinctive rocky peaks and snow-covered slopes create the impression of an isolated Alaskan mountain wilderness, even though the cameras were firmly planted in New Zealand.
The terrain was particularly useful for sequences built around exposure, cold and difficult movement. The sharp ridgelines and open elevations make the characters look very small against the landscape, which is exactly the sort of visual trick a survival thriller wants when its central characters are already having a spectacularly bad day.
The Remarkables also sits close to Queenstown, making the area an important part of the production’s wider Otago filming footprint.
Glenorchy and Kinloch, Lake Wakatipu
Further around Lake Wakatipu, Glenorchy and Kinloch provided a markedly different landscape. The production used the region’s broad river flats, gravelly banks and dense beech forests for parts of Belmont and Odin’s journey.
These locations helped create the feeling of an enormous wilderness without requiring every scene to take place above the snow line. The riverbanks were used for sequences involving Belmont and his canine companion as they navigate the harsh environment and search for what they need to continue their trek.
The area also carries a familiar cinematic history, having featured in the wider landscape of The Lord of the Rings films. Heart of the Beast therefore joins a rather distinguished group of productions to make use of the region’s forests and mountains, although this time Middle-earth has been replaced by a considerably less hospitable survival story.
Mount Aspiring National Park, Otago
The production went considerably deeper into the wilderness at Mount Aspiring National Park, where some of the film’s most remote material was captured.
The national park’s glacier-shaped valleys, alpine ridges and isolated peaks gave Ayer exactly the kind of terrain required for the story’s long trek. Getting there, however, was far less straightforward than simply driving a film truck up a mountain.
Helicopters were used extensively to transport people and equipment into remote areas. One particularly narrow ridge could accommodate only three helicopter loads of equipment. Brad Pitt and the dog portraying Odin were taken to the location with a small crew to capture wide shots of the pair moving across the isolated ridge.
Because there was barely enough physical space for a conventional camera setup, Ayer sometimes operated the camera himself. It is an unusually hands-on approach, but the circumstances left little room for the usual sprawling film set.
Milford Sound, Fiordland National Park
The production also travelled to Milford Sound in Fiordland National Park, using its enormous cliffs and dramatic waterways to represent another section of Belmont’s journey through the Alaskan wilderness.
Milford Sound is defined by towering granite walls, dark water and an exceptionally wet climate. The cliffs rise more than 1,200 metres above the water in places, creating the kind of imposing natural backdrop that would be difficult to manufacture convincingly.
The weather also worked in the film’s favour. Rain and waterfalls frequently transform the surrounding rock faces, giving the survival sequences a constantly changing appearance. In other words, the production did not need to ask the landscape department to make things look miserable. Fiordland was apparently happy to handle that job itself.
The location added another visual layer to the film’s wilderness, moving the story beyond snowy mountains into wetter, darker and more enclosed terrain.
Auckland Studios, Auckland
Not every part of Heart of the Beast required a helicopter, a mountain ridge or a heroic battle against the weather. Auckland Studios was used for controlled production work, including interior seaplane cockpit scenes and technical elements associated with the complicated crash sequence.
The studio work complemented the extensive location filming in the South Island. While the outdoor scenes needed real landscapes and difficult environmental conditions, controlled studio space allowed the filmmakers to handle technical sequences where precision and safety were more practical.
It also demonstrates how the production divided its approach: spectacular wilderness scenes were taken into the landscape, while specialist interior work could be managed in a controlled environment. Hollywood may love a good mountain, but even Hollywood occasionally needs a roof.
The South Island’s role as Alaska
Taken together, the filming locations across Otago, Central Otago and Fiordland created the physical world of Heart of the Beast without the production actually travelling to Alaska. The contrast is central to understanding the film’s visual identity.
James Belmont is supposed to be fighting his way through the Alaskan wilderness after a seaplane crash, alongside his retired military combat dog Odin. The pair face freezing conditions, rivers, forests, predators and a 58-mile journey towards safety.
New Zealand’s South Island offered the filmmakers the combination of snow-covered alpine terrain, glacial lakes, dense forests, exposed ridges and huge mountain formations required to sell that story. The geography changes dramatically from one location to another, allowing the film to make Belmont’s journey feel expansive rather than visually repetitive.
There is also something amusingly appropriate about the production's solution. The story says Alaska, the cameras say New Zealand, and the mountains clearly did not receive the memo.
Why Heart of the Beast chose these locations
The locations were not simply selected because they looked attractive on camera. The production wanted the environment itself to become part of the survival story.
Ayer and Fiore deliberately favoured practical landscapes and avoided depending entirely on digital environments. That meant the cast and crew had to contend with genuine cold, difficult terrain, rain and logistical challenges, particularly when filming in Mount Aspiring National Park.
That approach suits a film centred on physical endurance. Belmont is not wandering through a perfectly controlled wilderness with convenient paths and suspiciously clean clothes. His surroundings are supposed to be difficult, unpredictable and exhausting.
For viewers interested in visiting the locations, several of the areas used by the production are accessible destinations in New Zealand, although the most remote filming spots can involve serious logistical challenges. Importantly, not every precise filming position was publicly identified while production was underway, partly because keeping sensitive locations private helped prevent unwanted interruptions during filming.
My take is that Heart of the Beast has a rather clever relationship with its locations. New Zealand does an unusually convincing job of pretending to be Alaska, and the decision to shoot in real mountains rather than manufacture everything digitally should give the finished film a stronger sense of physical scale. Queenstown and Lake Wakatipu bring the polished postcard scenery, while Mount Aspiring and Fiordland provide the rougher edge the story needs. Glenorchy and Kinloch sit somewhere in between, offering forests and river country that can disappear into the fictional wilderness with remarkably little effort.
The funniest part is probably that a film about being stranded in one of the world's harshest environments was itself filmed in another place that seems perfectly capable of making a film crew question their career choices. From a visual perspective, though, that discomfort appears to be exactly what Ayer wanted.
For anyone planning a New Zealand trip around Heart of the Beast filming locations, Queenstown, Lake Wakatipu, Glenorchy, Kinloch, The Remarkables, Mount Aspiring National Park and Milford Sound all offer very different landscapes connected to the production.
Just remember that seeing a spectacular mountain in the film does not necessarily mean you can simply walk up to the exact camera position. Some locations were remote, and access and filming logistics were very different from an ordinary holiday. Which Heart of the Beast location would you put first on your travel bucket list, and would you actually fancy retracing Belmont and Odin’s 58-mile survival journey?