I doubt Netflix had this in mind when it released Marriage Story back in 2019, but Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver’s famous row from the movie has found a second life as a real-life scare tactic for wolves.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Paul Wolf (his real name!), a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) district supervisor in Oregon, broadcast the audio from the Hollywood superstars’ fight scene to scare off wolves who were destroying livestock herds.
“I need the wolves to respond and know that, hey, humans are bad,” he said, in one of our favorite entertainment-adjacent quotes of the year.
Here’s how it works: the audio is broadcast via quadcopters that have thermal cameras that are used to spot any wolf at night and shine a light on it. A loudspeaker then broadcasts alarming sounds like fireworks, gunshots and people arguing. Cue Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver. AC/DC’s Thunderstruck was also used.
It’s a bizarre solution to a difficult problem, but it seems to be working. The WSJ said the drones were deployed in the Klamath Basin of southern Oregon after 11 cows were killed by wolves there in a 20-day period, but over the next 85 days when drones were on patrol, only two were killed. Perhaps the wolves heard the sound of Kylo Ren throwing another temper tantrum and thought they’d be better off making a swift exit.
Marriage Story, written and directed by Noah Baumbach, came out on Netflix in 2019. It stars Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver as a couple going through a bi-coastal divorce complicated by custody issues surrounding their son. IGN’s Marriage Story review returned an 8/10.
Image credit: Netflix / YouTube.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
