They
cut through all the crap, and the social games we play, and show who we are,” says Baltasar Kormákur. The Icelandic filmmaker behind Adrift and Everest is telling Teasers why survival stories continue to grip his psyche with the force of a lion’s jaw. “And if someone asks me to go to Africa and work there, I’m like, ‘Yeah, that sounds pretty good!’”
Operating in a new biome for Beast – afilm in which Idris Elba’s doctor dad and his teenage daughters are stalked across the Savanna by a rogue lion with a murderous grudge – Kormákur shot in Limpopo and the Northern Cape, where cast and crew were “surrounded by lions and elephants”, according to the daredevil filmmaker. “When the studio comes to me, they know I’m not going to shoot this in Atlanta on a soundstage.”