Is ‘Heart of the Beast’ based on a true story?

Heart of the Beast, aka the new Brad Pitt dog movie now playing in theaters, is the perfect movie for people who love dogs and the U.S. military.

Directed by David Ayer (The Beekeeper, A Working Man), with a screenplay written by Cameron Alexander, Heart of the Beast stars Brad Pitt as a retired Army Special Forces veteran named James Belmont, who is caring for his military combat dog Odin. Both James and Odin have PTSD from the trauma of combat in the Middle East.

Man and dog are about to have even more trauma, after they survive a plane crash and find themselves stranded in the Alaskan wilderness. Can they battle the forces of nature together to make it out of this one alive? You’ll have to watch the movie to find out. (That said, if you’re really dying to know if either Brad Pitt or the dog dies in Heart of the Beast, that information is just an easy Google search away.)

But if you’re more interested in knowing if the Heart of the Beast movie is based on a true story, then read on.

Is the Heart of the Beast movie based on a true story?

Heart of the Beast is not based on a true story. All of the characters in the movie, including the dog, are fictional. This is a made-up story that is not based on real events. There is no real story of a retired Special Forces veteran who was stranded in the wilderness with his dog.

The movie’s screenwriter, Cameron Alexander, graduated as a film student from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2010. According to a profile in the UC Santa Barbara alumni magazine, before his big break with Heart of the Beast, Alexander directed some music videos for indie bands as well as a few short films.

In an interview with the “HeyUGuys” on the red carpet, Alexander said he wrote the Heart of the Beast script as “a love letter to my dog” at a time when he wasn’t having success getting his screenplays made. “I was incredibly lonely and I was really broke,” Alexander said. “I just wrote a love letter to my dog kind of out of frustration, and to provide some catharsis for myself.”

Alexander went on to say he believes the script connected with audiences because “there is so much love in this story. It really is just different feelings I had for my dog or my dog had for me. Different hardships we were going through. All of it is just a metaphor for stuff that we went through.”

Given that Alexander was directing music videos and short films in LA, and not serving overseas, we can assume those “hardships” were not really the same sort of hardships you see Brad Pitt and his dog face in the movie.

So there you have it. Heart of the Beast may have been inspired by a man’s real love for his dog, but it is not based on a true story.