Sabrina Carpenter to play the Ginger Rogers to Tom Holland's Fred Astaire

This is per Deadline, which notes that Carpenter’s is actually the less central of two major castings announced for the untitled film today. The other, more monumental to the film’s reported plot, is that of The Substance‘s Margaret Qualley, who will star in the film as Adele Astaire, sister of Fred, and his first major dance partner. Although she’s been eclipsed for many in history by her younger brother’s cinematic collaborations with Rogers, the elder Astaire sibling was a legend of the vaudeville and Broadway circuits, where she and her brother dazzled audiences for fully 27 years before her retirement and marriage at the age of 35. Given that King’s film is reportedly based off of Kathleen Riley’s book The Astaires: Fred And Adele, we suspect audiences will see far more of Qualley in the movie than they will Carpenter.

Certainly, that’s what a new statement from King suggests: 

I am thrilled and honored to have been entrusted with telling the story of Fred Astaire and his original dance partner—his big sister Adele—to the big screen. Fred left a timeless legacy of dance on film, most famously in his collaborations with Ginger Rogers, while Adele’s work has been lost to history; indeed, no footage of her dancing survives. The cinematic challenge of bringing to life these icons of the 20th century is one that I could not imagine without Tom Holland, Margaret Qualley and Sabrina Carpenter by my side.

The Astaire project is being produced by (among others) former Sony exec Amy Pascal, who’s maintained a long association with Holland as he’s grown in, out, and then right back into his various Spider-Man phases. The film has also received support from surviving members of Fred Astaire’s family, notably his daughter, Ava Astaire McKenzie.