Netflix acquires Halle Berry’s directorial debut, ‘Bruised,’ in 8-figure deal

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Netflix has secured worldwide rights to Halle Berry’s directorial debut, Bruised.

The drama is screening at the Toronto Film Festival, where Netflix closed up a sale for $20 million ahead of the film’s premiere on Saturday, per Deadline.

The Oscar-winning actress also stars in this tale of a washed-up MMA fighter on a path of redemption amid a bitter custody battle. According to Variety, Berry cracked two ribs while shooting the film. But she wasn’t going to let the pain of her injury derail her dream of directing, theGRIO previously reported.

“I didn’t want to stop because I had prepared for so long. We had rehearsed; we were ready. So my mind, my director’s mind, was just — keep going. And I compartmentalized that, and I just kept going: ‘I’m not going to stop. I’ve come too far. I’m going to act as if this isn’t hurting. I’m going to will myself through it.’ And so we did.”

The script for Bruised came to Berry three years ago, and was originally written for a 25-year-old Irish Catholic girl.

“I knew as written it could not be me, but what I loved about the story is it was classic fight film,” Berry said. “I loved the fractured brokenness of this character, and I love to see a film that’s about redemption. I want to see the human spirit soar, I want to see someone rise above obstacles and still be standing at the end of the day.”

Berry then set out to “convince the producers, who had the rights to the movie, [that they] should let me reimagine it for a middle-aged Black woman.”

The producers agreed.

Berry said a conversation with her friend, producer Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, prompted her decision to step behind the camera for her directorial debut.

“I said to her, ‘No one understands what’s in my head, and she said, ‘Why don’t you do it?’” Berry recalled “I slept on it overnight and I woke up thinking ‘Yes, I can.’ I knew I’d worked harder than I ever worked in my entire life on a character, and the last thing I wanted was for all of that work to be for naught and mistakenly fall into the hands of a visionary who didn’t see it quite the way I saw it.”

A Netflix release date for Bruised has yet to be announced.

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