Halle Berry is filming her directorial debut ‘Bruised’ in Atlantic City

Halle Berry’s directorial debut Bruised will bring the Oscar-winning actress to Atlantic City for filming this week.

Announced last year, the project stars Berry as a disgraced MMA fighter named Jackie Justice, according to a report from Deadline. In the film, Berry’s character reconnects with her estranged son Manny, 6, and faces off against a rising MMA star while finding her identity as a mother and regaining her place in the world of professional fighting. Production was initially supposed to begin in March.

The HQ2 Nightclub at Atlantic City’s Ocean Casino Resort hosted an open casting call for Bruised last week, where filmmakers scouted extras and actors for parts including a referee, fight host, and security guard. Casting agency Weist-Barron-Ryan indicated on Facebook that filming will take place in Atlantic City through Friday.

“It’s just where I’m at right now and what my message is all about,” Berry, 53, said of Bruised earlier this year in an appearance on iHeartRadio’s The Big Ticket with Marc Malkin. “Being of a certain age, it’s about dealing with ageism [and] racism — defying all the rules and telling people none of that matters, you can do exactly what you want to do. You can define who you are.”

Berry has also been showing some of her training for the film via her Instagram account, writing in one post that she recently achieved one long-term goal for Bruised: ripped abs.

Berry’s Bruised is the latest to hit the area, and comes following the wrap of AMC’s Dispatches from Elsewhere. That project, whose stars include Jason Segel and Sally Field, recently finished filming in Philadelphia. Local casting agency Heery-Loftus Casting indicated on Facebook that the show features more than 3,000 background actors and 100 local principal actors.

Now, with Dispatches having wrapped, the big project in the immediate Philadelphia area is HBO’s Mare of Easttown, which stars Kate Winslet as a small-town Pennsylvania detective. That series, which is filming around the Philadelphia suburbs, is slated for a 2020 release.

Philadelphia saw a number of major Hollywood projects come through the area this year, including Idris Elba-starrer Concrete Cowboys, NBC’s This Is Us, Netflix’s Queer Eye, and M. Night Shyamalan’s Apple TV+ series, Servant.

“We are manufacturing,” Greater Philadelphia Film Office executive director Sharon Pinkenson said at a meeting discussing Pennsylvania’s film production tax credit. “We manufacture entertainment.”