Priyanka Chopra Jonas Is a ‘Beast’ in New Prime Video Pirate Movie The Bluff | Interview
ComingSoon spoke with The Bluff director Frank E. Flowers about his new pirate movie. Flowers discussed working with Priyanka Chopra Jonas, his unique spin on swashbuckling films, and more. Also starring Karl Urban, the film is out on Prime Video on February 25, 2026.
“Ercell ‘Bloody Mary’ Bodden (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) thought she had escaped her violent past as a pirate, finding peace in the Cayman Islands with her loving husband T.H. (Ismael Cruz Cordova), their son Isaac (Vedanten Naidoo) and her sister-in-law Elizabeth (Safia Oakley-Green). But when her notorious former captain, Connor (Karl Urban), arrives seeking revenge, Ercell’s world is torn apart. Forced to confront the demons she’s tried to bury, Ercell is thrust back into a deadly game of secrets and survival. Armed with lethal swordsmanship, cunning traps, and a fierce will to protect those she loves, she wages a brutal war against Connor’s merciless crew. Ercell’s fight to save her family becomes a journey of redemption, as she reclaims her power and embraces the warrior she once was. Against the breathtaking backdrop of the Cayman Brac’s Skull Cave and towering bluffs, producers Anthony and Joe Russo present The Bluff; a gritty, adrenaline-fueled action-adventure about family, survival, and the indomitable strength of a mother’s love,” says the official synopsis for The Bluff.
Tyler Treese: Swashbuckler films have such a rich history in cinema, and women have left their mark on the genre before, but it’s primarily focused on male pirates. What made you want to tell this female-led pirate movie?
Frank E. Flowers: For us, everything about this movie — I’m from the Caribbean, grew up in Cayman Islands, where the movie takes place — we want to anchor in authenticity. What I found was that in our history, the men went off to be seafarers, and the women stayed behind. They built a society, they protected the land from hurricanes, pirate attacks, famine, you know, all the things that would happen. So it really was organic to have, when we’re constructing this home invasion version of a pirate movie, as opposed to the high seas adventure swashbuckling style, it was organic to the premise to be like, “Who would be home alone? Who would be here when the bad things happen?” It would be the women and the children. And so we really wanted to mine that and to sort of have what I believe might be the first pirate movie from a Caribbean perspective and just kind of blow it up from there.
Your lead, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, is wonderful, and I had no doubts that she could bring the action, but I was shocked by how nasty she is in this film. There are some really nasty kills in this. How was it working with her to bring out that intensity? Because she is going all out, and she’s completely matching Karl Urban in The Bluff.
Priyanka is a beast. First of all. She’s an incredible producer, performer, collaborator, mother, you know, there’s nothing she can’t do. She was speaking at Harvard last week, and I’m like, “Literally, there’s nothing you can’t do, right?” So, you know, to have someone like her who, if you actually go and look back at her work in Bollywood, not only Hollywood, right? She’s got such a range of characters.
So, as a director, you look at that and go, “How can I tap into all that?” Like you said, even though she’s a woman under attack, if she takes a shot, the witch takes that conch shell and goes full fight club on that dude’s face, you’re like, “You are a psychopath.” But yet what she did so well was mining the emotion and mining the empathy so that when you’re watching her sell, even though she’s doing these crazy, despicable things, you are able to empathize with her.
Same with Karl, right? Like Karl comes through with all that swagger, with all those vibes, but his mission, even though it’s kind of a messed up way of going about it, you kind of get [it.] You want freedom. You did your time, you served, you spilled blood, and now you want your piece of the pie, right? It’s kind of a gangster film in that way. And so it was really having both of them tap into the layers of the character is what I think led to some really special sauce.
Yeah. In one of the early fights, she rips a dread out of a guy’s hair, and you see the scalp, and I was like, “We’re in for something here.” I knew it was gonna be intense.
Bro, I mean, it was a lot of those moments where we would go to the gym with them, and I’d be like, “Run me through the fight.” Sometimes the fight coordinator would be like, “Oh, well, what if you did this?” I’m like, “Yeah, that looks cool, but why don’t I just bite this guy? Or why don’t I just pull?” So we really would get in those scenarios and be like, how would you survive? That was what drove [it], that’s why the action feels so authentic and so visceral, because it was like, “How do we survive this attack?”
I also like that the plot was relatively simple, but the characters are so complex. You really give the actors a lot to chew on. What made you want to make this a more character-focused film rather than having a plot with twists on top of twists?
Well, it starts from my writing partner, Joe [Ballarini], and I, we both went to USC, and there was such an emphasis on character there. When we started with this, and we talked about the Mama Bear version of the movie, right? This home invasion, you know, we were in COVID lockdown when we first came up, so we’re like, “Yo, what if we could shoot a movie that all took place at a house?” That was the first idea, right? And then it just kept getting a little bit bigger. I reached out to Zoe Saldaña and her sisters, a production company called Cinestar, and we’ve been wanting to tell Caribbean stories for a long time, and so we were doubling down on the heart of it. We’re doubling down on what was going through this woman’s mind, what was her past, how did it go?
Then, when we realized it was a bigger canvas, she opened the Rolodex, bringing in the Russos. I was surprised, actually, because they make such big films, right? That they were like character first. Everything is character. Even the action, even the style. So, really, there was this kind of true north where you get interesting characters. The plot is, as you said, it’s pretty simple, but like you can be more invested in a human being that you can relate to, right? So, we just tried to go at it with that the entire time, and that just guided our whole process, you know?
Thanks to Frank E. Flowers for taking the time to talk about The Bluff.
Source: Comingsoon.net