The first trailer for Heart of the Beast, shown to exhibitors at CinemaCon in April, confirms the shape of David Ayer's next film: Brad Pitt plays a former Army Special Forces soldier who has withdrawn from civilization, forced back into it when his small plane goes down in the Alaskan wilderness.
His only companion is a retired German Shepherd service dog, and the footage tracks the pair crossing mountain terrain and river crossings while fending off wolves and bears. J.K. Simmons appears in support. Paramount has set the release for September 25, 2026.
Before this footage, what existed publicly was casting news: Ayer attached in March 2024, Pitt joining as star and producer under Plan B in January 2025, and a Queenstown, New Zealand shoot standing in for Alaska. The trailer is the first material evidence of tone and craft. It leans hard on the dog as co-lead, cutting to the animal navigating obstacles as often as it cuts to Pitt.
The project's roots go back further than the casting news suggests. Cameron Alexander's script appeared on the 2017 Black List, meaning it sat unmade for roughly eight years before Ayer signed on. Damien Chazelle and Olivia Hamilton's Wild Chickens Productions co-produces alongside Temple Hill and Kino World, an unusual pairing of Ayer's genre instincts with producers better known for La La Land and Whiplash.
The footage sells a straightforward survival premise well: hostile terrain, a wounded protagonist, an animal performance doing real narrative work. Ayer's recent output has been uneven, and a trailer built around a dog braving wolves and rapids is, by nature, engineered to move an audience regardless of what surrounds it. Pitt's performance is framed as haunted rather than heroic, a more interesting choice than a straight action pitch, but a first look built for exhibitors is not evidence the character work holds across a full runtime.
