New Zealand — Brad Pitt’s Flying Double on “Heart of the Beast” Was a Top-Dressing Pilot Who Nearly Scrapped the Float Planes

• Blenheim pilot Nigel Griffith flew the float-plane shots as Brad Pitt's double on "Heart of the Beast."
• He was measured on an Auckland airfield and told he was the same size and shape as Pitt.
• He flew the crash sequence down inside a glacier basin three times, once because a bug landed on the lens.

Posted: October 27, 2026

The float-plane problem on David Ayer's "Heart of the Beast" was close to being solved by import. The production needed float planes in New Zealand and the set director was about to buy them from overseas when Nigel Griffith — who runs an agricultural aviation company out of Blenheim and chairs the Recreational Backcountry Pilots Association — mentioned he had a set of floats sitting in his hangar that he had written off as scrap. That call turned into the aircraft, and then into the flying double job.

The casting happened the way matching usually does, on the ground and with a tape measure. Griffith landed at Ardmore to about twenty people waiting on the grass; one of them asked to take his measurements, told him he was exactly the same shape and size as the lead, and asked whether he would do the role. He had been sworn to secrecy from day one and did not know who the star was until he got to Auckland.

The brief was low and tight: hills, mountain ridges, lakes and rivers, in an aircraft he describes as heavy and underwhelming on performance with the floats fitted. The sequence he singles out is Earnslaw Burn, a basin he had never flown before. "It's like flying around in the inside of a volcano," he says — a climb to six or seven thousand feet, then a descent down inside an almost circular amphitheatre underneath glaciers, then the crash sequence flown out through the valley running from it. He got through it, was told a bug had landed on the lens, and flew it again. Three times in all, which he says is what finally settled him into the job.

The part most relevant to anyone who has worked an aerial unit is how the camera ship handled him. Directions came through an earpiece while he concentrated on flying, and his worry going in was the interaction with the helicopter. The helicopter pilot — who Griffith rates as one of the best in the country at that work — solved it by taking the adjustment himself: when the director asked for the picture aircraft to drop, he climbed a little instead and took the shot from there. Pitt also trained with one of Griffith's colleagues on how he should look while flying, including starting sequences and taxiing, so the cockpit coverage would cut against the aerial plates.

The film was shot across Queenstown, Glenorchy, Mount Aspiring National Park and Milford Sound standing in for the Alaskan wilderness. The aircraft themselves carry local history — ex-Mt Cook ski planes. IMDb lists Allan Poppleton as stunt coordinator and second unit director, with Glen Levy as assistant stunt coordinator, Bodie Fitzpatrick as head stunt rigger, Joel Abadal as Brad Pitt's stunt double and Alfie Speight as aerial photography pilot. Griffith has since sold one of the float planes to a farmer friend and gone back to aerial top dressing.

Source: RNZ — Brad Pitt's Kiwi double for Heart of the Beast: 'It was a bit of a miracle thing'

Learn more on IMDb: Heart of the Beast (2026) · Allan Poppleton · Joel Abadal