Sabrina Carpenter is returning to the big screen as Ginger Rogers in a Fred Astaire biopic that also brings an overlooked chapter of Astaire’s career back into focus.
by Paul Cashmere
Sabrina Carpenter will play Ginger Rogers opposite Tom Holland’s Fred Astaire in a new biopic directed by Paul King, with Margaret Qualley joining the cast as Astaire’s older sister and original dance partner, Adele.
The still-untitled Sony Pictures film will explore the career of Astaire, including the early stage partnership with Adele that established the siblings as major performers on Broadway and London’s West End before Fred moved into Hollywood.
For Carpenter, the role represents a return to feature filmmaking after building a major music career. It also places her in one of the most recognisable dance partnerships in film history, with Rogers and Astaire appearing together in a series of films including The Gay Divorcee, Top Hat, Swing Time and Shall We Dance.
The casting gives the project a particular connection to the history of musical cinema. While Astaire and Rogers became synonymous with Hollywood dance, the film is also intended to bring attention to Adele Astaire, whose career has largely disappeared from popular memory.
Director Paul King has described that contrast as central to the project.
“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,” King said.
The film is based on Kathleen Riley’s biography The Astaires: Fred & Adele, with Riley serving as a story and script consultant. King has co-written the screenplay with Steven Levenson.
The story will look at Fred and Adele’s professional partnership during the 1910s and 1920s. Adele eventually retired from performing in 1932, while Fred continued into the next phase of his career, becoming one of the defining stars of Hollywood’s musical era.
That makes Carpenter’s casting as Rogers part of a larger story rather than simply a recreation of the famous Astaire and Rogers screen partnership.
Rogers and Astaire made ten films together, developing a screen partnership that became a defining feature of the studio musical era. Their work combined dance, music and choreography with the increasingly sophisticated filmmaking techniques of 1930s and 1940s Hollywood.
The new film therefore has two distinct dance histories to bring together. Astaire’s relationship with Adele predates his Hollywood career, while Rogers became his best-known screen partner after he established himself in films.
Holland has already indicated that the physical demands of playing Astaire are a major part of the project. The actor began his career as a dancer on London’s West End, playing the title role in Billy Elliot The Musical, a background that informed his decision to take on the Astaire role.
“I have a desire to use no doubles, to do all of the dancing, to shoot those dances in one shot, how he would have done it,” Holland previously said.
Holland also described his early rehearsals for the role as a mixture of excitement and apprehension, saying he had “so much work” to do to try to do Astaire justice.
For Carpenter, the film represents another stage in a career that began in acting before music became her dominant creative focus. She appeared in television and film roles including Girl Meets World, The Hate U Give, Tall Girl, Work It and Emergency before becoming one of pop’s most visible current performers.
Her 2026 work has also included a return to an Old Hollywood aesthetic. Carpenter’s House Tour video featured Qualley, creating an existing connection between the two actors before they join the same feature film.
The casting follows a particularly busy period for Carpenter, who has performed at the Grammys, headlined Coachella and worked with Madonna during 2026. She has also continued developing her screen presence after establishing herself as a singer and songwriter.
King said the challenge of bringing the Astaires and Rogers to the screen was one he could not imagine undertaking without Holland, Qualley and Carpenter.
“I’m thrilled and honoured to have been entrusted with telling the story of Fred Astaire and his original dance partner, his big sister Adele, to the big screen,” he said.
There is currently no release date announced for the film. With Carpenter taking the role of Rogers and Qualley bringing Adele Astaire back into the story, the project will connect two very different chapters of Astaire’s career, from the sibling partnership that began on stage to the Hollywood dances that made his name internationally recognised.
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