Naomi Watts reluctantly becomes the caretaker of a massive Great Dane following the unexpected death of her close friend and mentor (played by Bill Murray) in The Friend.

Entertainment Weekly can exclusively share first-look photos of the dramedy from co-writers and directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel, adapted from the National Book Award-winning novel by Sigrid Nunez of the same name about grief and friendship.

Watts plays Iris, a New York novelist and writing instructor who loses her closest friend and mentor, Walter (Murray), to suicide. In the wake of Walter's passing, she becomes caretaker not just to his literary legacy but his beloved dog, Apollo, played by a Harlequin Great Dane named Bing — coming for the bone of Anatomy of a Fall's Messi.

Matt Infante

Though initially disinclined to bunk with an enormous dog in her tiny Manhattan apartment, Iris develops a kinship with Apollo, one bound by their shared grief and path to healing.

It was Siegel who first stumbled upon Nunez's 2018 novel via The New York Times' review of the material. "It just sounded unusual," he recalls to EW in conversation alongside McGehee. "It also sounded funny. We had never read Sigrid’s work before, but she's a very funny writer. Her syntax and sentence construction is such a pleasure to read. This very fraught story also being funny, we found it irresistible."

Matt Infante

Matt Infante

McGehee says he and his longtime collaborator (The Deep End and What Maisie Knew, among others) were particularly struck by the "unusual arc" of the story's four-legged friend. Adds Siegel, "The dog is more like a human character in the sense that he undergoes an emotional experience in the movie along with Iris. We thought that was beautiful."

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It was important, then, to cast the right pup, an exhaustive process that spanned six months. (After all, Harlequin Great Danes are a rare breed.) "We met probably 30 dogs personally traveling around with Bill Berloni, the animal trainer," McGehee recalls. All the potential Apollos were very good boys, "but when we saw Bing, it just clicked," McGehee says. "He's so charismatic. He's super intelligent."

Matt Infante

Siegel is more exact with Bing's big Hollywood moment: "You know how dogs put their heads between their paws in a sphinx-like position? Dogs do it very occasionally, but that's one of Bing's resting positions. Almost immediately after we met him, he put his big, sad face on the ground with his two big paws between his head, and it was like, You’ve got to be kidding me! The movie was right there in his face."

With the aid of Berloni and Bing's owner Bev Klingensmith, Watts spent a lot of time with her four-legged costar to establish that trust and comfort, engaging in brief training sessions and taking walks around the block together. "In that process, they really became friends," McGehee says, sharing that Bing even formed a bond with Watts' tiny Yorkshire terrier chihuahua mix named Izzy. "Izzy is smaller than Bing’s head, but they were super sweet together."

The Friend, which recently made its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, is set to debut at the upcoming Toronto and New York film festivals this month. And, yes, Bing will be on the red carpet. McGehee marvels, "He's a real movie star."