NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — Flaco, the beloved Eurasian eagle-owl who captured New Yorkers’ hearts after his daring escape from the Central Park Zoo in 2023, will be immortalized in a documentary that is now in production at HBO.
“You might think, or I might think, everybody knows this story, but actually, almost nobody does,” director Penny Lane told 1010 WINS. “It’s actually quite niche. So I’m really looking forward to just bringing the story to a much bigger audience, in a way that you can really only do with the magic of cinema.”
Lane, known for documentaries like “Music Box: Listening to Kenny G,” is working at the helm of the film, which is in production with HBO Documentary Films, Sandbox Films and Spinning Nancy. Gabriel Sedgwick will produce.
After making his great escape, Flaco was often spotted hunting and hiding in his favorite Central Park oak tree, becoming a local celebrity and favorite photography subject for birders and Flaco fanatics alike. Lane’s personal investment in the owl came when her boyfriend stumbled across him on the street.
“It was my boyfriend, actually, who spotted him,” she said. “So he knew that I’m a bird person, and so he just kind of stepped outside from an event and came upon this enormous owl sitting in the middle of the sidewalk on Fifth Avenue. And he took a picture and texted it to me to say: ‘Is this normal?’”
About one year after he fled the zoo, Flaco crashed into an apartment building on the Upper West Side and died. A necropsy later showed that he had enough rat poison and pigeon virus in his system to kill him.
Hundreds of mourners gathered in Central Park soon after his death with gifts and drawings to say goodbye to the famed raptor. In the year since, Flaco’s remains have been transferred to the American Museum of Natural History and he has been memorialized by an ongoing exhibit at The New York Historical, highlighting his deep impact on the city and New Yorkers.
“There was something about the specter of this magnificent, enormous, beautiful, you know, strange alien owl, in the city that just brought that home that we are part of nature,” Lane said.
Much like “The Year of Flaco” exhibit, Lane’s work aims to center Flaco’s relationship with the public and what he symbolizes to New Yorkers. She and her team are enlisting the public’s help in sharing photos, videos and personal stories about him.
“We do have a website, flacodocumentary.com, and it’s been set up to allow for uploading of photos and videos and personal stories,” she said. “Anyone, in your audience who may have seen Flaco, or even just heard about Flaco, and has a story about what he meant to them, we really want to hear.”
A release date for the documentary has not yet been set.