An A-List Animal Trainer Prepares a Great Dane for His Film Début

Siegel and McGehee had actors in mind for the narrator and the mentor, to whom they gave the names Iris and Walter, respectively. Now they needed their Apollo. In the fall of 2019, they reached out to the prominent trainer Bill Berloni, who has been supplying, hiring, and coaching animals for stage and screen for nearly fifty years. Berloni asked if it had to be a Great Dane. “Great Danes are big, dumb, and lazy,” he told them. (Or, as he prefers to put it now, “They are sensitive, and not known for their obedience training.”) “Can I talk you into another breed?”