Priyanka Chopra Joins Russell Crowe to Film Sci-Fi Movie Bluefly on Australia’s Gold Coast

Another marquee production is pointing its cameras at Queensland, and this time it arrives with two of the most bankable names in global cinema attached.

Russell Crowe and Priyanka Chopra Jonas will star in Bluefly, a sci-fi action thriller that begins principal photography later this year on Australia’s Gold Coast. Highland Film Group is handling worldwide rights and will launch sales at the Toronto International Film Festival market.

Directed by Nimród Antal, the filmmaker behind Predators and Stranger Things, Bluefly is written by David Frigerio, William Eubank and Carlyle Eubank. It follows a grieving UN translator pulled into a black-ops mission in the Congo to recover a downed aircraft that isn’t supposed to exist. As a Special Operations team pushes through militia-held territory, the recovery becomes a descent, and the closer they get to the craft, the clearer it becomes that they were never meant to bring it home.

For the region, the shoot continues a familiar pattern. Both leads have worked on the Gold Coast recently, Crowe on Derrick Borte’s The Get Out and Chopra Jonas on Frank E. Flowers’ The Bluff. The state remains an attractive base for productions of this scale, with federal, state and City of Gold Coast economic incentives and studio infrastructure to match.

Highland Film Group is framing the project as a global commercial play.

“We have a stellar cast led by Russell Crowe and Priyanka Chopra Jonas who will ignite the screen in this high-stakes, sci-fi thrill ride with layers of depth,” Highland Film Group CEO Arianne Fraser said, describing the film as “heart-pounding entertainment with a complex story full of unexpected twists.”

Company COO Delphine Perrier said Highland was eager to take the title to buyers. “With Nimród Antal at the helm and our wonderful cast, we cannot wait to introduce this fantastic project to our global buyers,” she said.

Antal cast the film as a marriage of character drama and genre dread. “Bluefly is an intense, character-driven thriller wrapped inside a bold science-fiction premise,” he said. “It’s the kind of film I live to make, grounded, propulsive, and full of dread.”

The pedigree is hard to argue with. Crowe is a three-time Oscar nominee who won Best Actor for Gladiator. Chopra Jonas leads Prime Video’s Citadel, recently produced and starred in the film Heads of State, and is soon to be in legendary Indian director S.S. Rajamouli’s upcoming film Varanasi in 2027.

For now, the next project is Bluefly, with cameras rolling on the Gold Coast later this year.

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