The animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) is calling for a boycott of the film A Dog's Purpose after video footage emerged from the set showing a German Shepherd being forced into rushing water.
In the short clip, from November 2015, published on the gossip site TMZ, the dog, apparently named Hercules, stands between its handler and a large pool of turbulent water in preparation for the shooting of a scene.
In the video Hercules appears frightened, leaning away from the water and struggling to escape his handler's grasp.
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"Just gotta throw him in," says an off-screen voice, while the handler attempts to shove the dog into the water.
"I don't think he wants to go in," says the voice, while the dog jumps back out of the water. "He wants to get away. Just throw him in."
The dog is thrown into the water but struggles to get out and a member of the team has to jump in to rescue him, with people shouting "Cut it. Cut it."
TMZ says the rushing water effect was achieved with eight outboard motors in a closed pool and claims that director Lasse Hallstrom was present at the time. But Hallstrom has tweeted that he was not on set during the shoot and says he too was "disturbed" by the footage.
"Peta is calling on dog lovers to boycott the film in order to send the message that dogs and other animals should be treated humanely, not as movie props," said the group.
The film's production company Amblin Entertainment and its distributor Universal Pictures released a joint statement saying that the footage was "edited", reports the Washington Post. According to the statement, "the Amblin production team followed rigorous protocols to foster an ethical and safe environment for the animals".
They added: "While we continue to review the circumstances shown in the edited footage, Amblin is confident that great care and concern were shown for the German Shepherd Hercules, as well as for all of the other dogs featured throughout the production of the film."
One of the movie's producers, Gavin Polone, who has written about the maltreatment of animals on sets in the past, told Deadline he was "horrified" by the video.
"People have to be held responsible for this. It was someone's job to watch out for this kind of thing. Why didn't they? American Humane are supposed to be there supervising. That's their job that someone is paid a lot of money to do. Why wasn't this stopped? There needs to be a better system than this," he said.
American Humane, which monitors the use of animals on films in the US, released a statement saying they were "placing the safety representative who was on the set on administrative leave immediately and are bringing in an independent third party to conduct an investigation into this matter".
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