Sabrina Carpenter Is Ginger Rogers in Tom Holland’s Fred Astaire Biopic

• Sabrina Carpenter will play Ginger Rogers, and Margaret Qualley will play Fred’s sister, Adele Astaire, in Sony’s untitled Fred Astaire biopic starring Tom Holland.
• Paul King, who directed the Paddington movies and Wonka, wrote the script with Steven Levenson, based on Kathleen Riley’s book The Astaires: Fred & Adele.
• There is no release date yet. Holland has already started dance rehearsals for the role.

Tom Holland has his dance partners. Sabrina Carpenter, 27, will play Ginger Rogers and Margaret Qualley, 31, will play Adele Astaire in Sony’s untitled Fred Astaire biopic, with Tom Holland, 30, in the title role. The casting was announced Thursday (Sept. 25).

For Carpenter, the Grammy-winning pop star, it is a return to acting. Her last movie was Emergency, in 2022.

Who is Sabrina Carpenter playing in the Fred Astaire movie?

Ginger Rogers, the partner most people picture when they hear Astaire’s name. The two made 10 films together between 1933 and 1949, including Top Hat (1935) and Swing Time (1936), and Rogers won the best actress Oscar for Kitty Foyle (1940), a drama without him.

The line that follows her everywhere, that she did everything Astaire did “backwards and in high heels,” comes from a 1982 Frank and Ernest comic strip by Bob Thaves. It describes the mechanics of partner dancing: the lead moves forward, and the follow mirrors him in reverse.

Carpenter has danced on screen before. After three seasons on Disney Channel’s Girl Meets World, she starred in Netflix’s Work It (2020) as a high school senior who builds a dance team to get into college.

Who was Adele Astaire?

Fred’s older sister, and his first partner. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, the Austerlitz children started out in vaudeville as kids, then became stars on Broadway and in London’s West End in the 1920s, in shows like Lady, Be Good! (1924) and Funny Face (1927). Adele was often considered the bigger star of the act.

In 1932 she retired to marry Lord Charles Cavendish, the son of the Duke of Devonshire, and moved to Ireland. Only then did Fred go to Hollywood alone. That arc, from vaudeville to the West End to the split, is what the film follows.

Qualley trained in ballet before she turned to acting, and played dancer Ann Reinking in FX’s Fosse/Verdon, which earned her an Emmy nomination in 2019.

When does filming start on the Fred Astaire biopic?

Production is reportedly set to begin in January 2027, and Sony has not announced a release date. Holland was first attached to the role in 2021, when producer Amy Pascal said she wanted him to play Astaire.

He told Live with Kelly and Mark in July that he had done his first dance rehearsal for the role. “I was really excited afterwards, but I was equally terrified ’cause I have so much work to do,” he said.

Holland trained at London’s Pineapple Dance Studios as a kid, for the West End run of Billy Elliot the Musical, and went back to the same studio to prepare. “One of my biggest regrets in my career is after I finished Billy Elliot, I quit dancing,” he said.

King said in a statement that the challenge of bringing the dancers to life “is one I could not imagine without Tom Holland, Margaret Qualley and Sabrina Carpenter.” Astaire’s daughter, Ava Astaire McKenzie, said the story “is in the best care.”

More movies based on real people: what’s real in Netflix’s Unabomber and the true story behind Primetime. More casting news in Movies & TV, including The Love Hypothesis.

— Bruno Monteiro

Sources: Sony Pictures casting announcement of Sept. 25, 2026, with statements by Paul King and Ava Astaire McKenzie, as reported by TheWrap (Umberto Gonzalez), Variety and Deadline; Tom Holland on Live with Kelly and Mark (July 22, 2026); production timing as reported by Production List; Holland’s 2021 casting as reported by Variety. The Astaires’ careers from Kathleen Riley’s The Astaires: Fred & Adele (Oxford University Press, 2012). Photos: Live with Kelly and Mark (ABC), Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Tonight Show (NBC), Turner Classic Movies (Swing Time) and Netflix (Work It).