Deadline confirms that Sabrina Carpenter has joined the Fred Astaire biopic being developed by Paul King, the director of Paddington and Wonka. Tom Holland will portray Astaire, and Margaret Qualley will play his sister and first dancing partner, Adele Astaire.
Carpenter, for her part, will bring Ginger Rogers to life, the actress and dancer who formed one of the most famous partnerships in cinema history with Astaire, starring together in ten films and becoming a benchmark of Hollywood’s classic musicals.
Carpenter is hardly a first-timer in acting. She began as a child with appearances on Law & Order: SVU and other series, but her big break came with Girl Meets World, the Disney Channel series in which she played Maya Hart for three seasons. Since then she has appeared in films such as The Hate U Give, The Short History of the Long Road, Tall Girl, Work It, Clouds and Emergency, in addition to headlining the special A Nonsense Christmas with Sabrina Carpenter.
The project had been in development for years. Holland announced in 2021 that he would portray Astaire, and now, at last, the cast is starting to take shape. The screenplay is by King and Steven Levenson and is based on the book The Astaires: Fred & Adele, by Kathleen Riley.
