Animal coordinator Andrew Simpson has the job other people invent at ten and then get told is not a living. Scripts arrive every week. Then David Ayer’s Heart of the Beast landed with Brad Pitt, a combat German Shepherd named Odin, and New Zealand standing in for Alaska — and Simpson called it a no-brainer. In this AMFM exclusive, Managing Editor Paul Salfen gets him on the surreal set days, the listening half of animal work, a Siberia Hail Mary at minus 60, and why he is not sure a real animal will still have a place in cinema five years from now. Paramount opens the film in U.S. theaters September 25, 2026.
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A Lot of People Talk to Animals. Not Many Listen.
Animal coordinator Andrew Simpson tells Paul Salfen why Heart of the Beast — Brad Pitt, a combat dog named Odin, and New Zealand standing in for Alaska — was a no-brainer, and why he is not sure a real animal will still have a place in cinema five years from now.
By christine