New Action Movie Pretty Lethal Smashes Ballet Stereotypes

When Timothée Chalamet claimed that “no one cares” about ballet anymore, an angry social media backlash put him firmly in his place. Let’s just hope he never has to encounter the fictional ballerinas in Amazon’s new action film Pretty Lethal, whose defensive skills could probably pirouette and jeté the Marty Supreme actor into the next millennium.

Written by former ballerina Kate Freund, Pretty Lethal follows a dysfunctional ballet troupe on their way to a prestigious competition who end up fighting for their lives after their bus breaks down and they run into an armed Hungarian mob. Luckily, they’re helped in their efforts by Uma Thurman’s ballet prodigy-turned-innkeeper Devora Kasimer and her henchmen. As the gang slits throats and breaks bones to survive, their predicament escalates into some elegant and beautifully choreographed carnage.

Director Vicky Jewson tells Den of Geek at SXSW that she was drawn to the movie because she hadn’t seen ballet in an action context before, and she was struck by the years of training, dedication and sacrifice—not to mention the high pain threshold—it takes to perform.

“The symbol of a ballerina is such a fragile, delicate image,” explains Jewson. “We got to subvert that completely and smash that stereotype.” She points to a scene in the film where Maddie Ziegler’s ballerina, Bones, talks about performing while sick and injured with bleeding feet, and Ziegler’s co-star Avantika agrees that it really highlights the grit that permeates a ballerina’s life and career. “When you’re walking down the street, you can notice a ballerina by their grace and strength,” she says. Thurman adds, “Having known people who are real performers and ballerinas, they have completed entire hours-long performances on broken bones. Show me a football player who runs across the field with a broken ankle.”

Stunt coordinators and a ballet choreographer worked with the cast, including Avantika and Ziegler, to develop a style called “ballet fu” for the movie, and the results are truly impressive. “We’re up against a bunch of big Hungarian men, so we had to decide what our strengths were and how we could weave through them with elegance and grace to survive,” Zeigler explains.

But it’s the teamwork and camaraderie among the ballet troupe, not the violence, that creates an irresistible “X factor power force,” says Thurman. “That is one of the things I love about what these incredible, brave young women did in this movie.”

Pretty Lethal will be streaming on Amazon Prime Video from March 25, 2026.