Hogzilla won’t die!
Published 11:24 pm Friday, October 20, 2006
“Attack of Hogzilla.” “Hogzilla Returns.” “Bride of Hogzilla.”
Though these potential titles probably won’t make it through development, a major Hollywood studio is reportedly looking into shooting a film that will feature the legendary feral hog killed two years ago in Berrien County.
Ken Holyoak, who owns the 1,500-acre fish farm and hunting preserve outside Alapaha where Hogzilla was shot in 2004, says that Warner Brothers has contacted him and is in the initial stages of producing a film about Holyoak.
“Two men from Warner Brothers have come down here, and I signed off on letting them use the story,” Holyoak says.
Holyoak has followed media reports of Hogzilla and the world record bream caught in one of his ponds and his fish farm closely over the years, compiling a huge collection of newspaper stories, magazine articles and tabloid expose spreads and posting them on several bulletin boards, the conglomeration of which stretch about 50 feet.
Hogzilla mania gripped this small South Georgia town of about 700 two years ago when a photo of Chris Griffin, the man who shot the alleged 12-foot, 1,000-pound wild hog, hit the Internet. Speculation swirled as to whether the beast had actually existed — speculation fueled by how quickly Griffin and Holyoak buried the corpse.
“We didn’t know we had a world-record hog on our hands, so we buried him,” Holyoak says.
In November 2004, National Geographic sent a television crew and a team of scientists to Alapaha to exhume Hogzilla and settle the question of whether the pig was authentic or just a not-so-urban myth.
Nancy Donnelly, who produced the episode of National Geographic Explorer that featured Hogzilla, wrote on the channel’s Web site that the pig was certainly real, though perhaps not as big as was claimed.
Scientists did retrieve the creature’s tusks, which were submitted to Safari Club International for inspection. That group declared that the length and width of Hogzilla’s tusks were world-record material. Documentation from the club, which Holyoak presents with pride to anyone who cares to look, notes that Hogzilla’s left tusk measured a little over 17 inches, its right over 15, and both tusks measured about three inches around.
Hogzilla’s grave, depicted covered in stones and concrete blocks with a white cross marker in 2004 Associated Press photos, is no longer recognizable — in part, Holyoak says, because of more recent feral hog activity in the area.
“We had a pretty grave out there,” Holyoak says, “but they (wild hogs that move through that part of his property) won’t let me keep it. I think they’re jealous. We’ve put concrete blocks and plastic flowers out there, and every night they’ll come along and root them right off the grave.”
Holyoak has also set up a pen near the grave site where he keeps captured wild hogs, feeds them and releases them.
As for the potential film, Ken Holyoak says he’s told this and other stories regarding Hogzilla and the world-record bream caught in one of his fish ponds to Warner Brothers writers, who told him it could take up to six months to produce a screenplay.
“It think (the screenplay) is supposed to be scary,” he says. “I’ll be some kind of mad scientist.”
Asked whether being portrayed as a mad scientist in a Hollywood production bothered him, Holyoak just smiled slyly and said, “That’s fine with me.”