Tom Holland Cast As Fred Astaire In New Film
The musician-biopic genre will never die, and the newest movie star to step up to the plate will apparently be Tom Holland, our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. While promoting the new spider-adventure Spider-Man: No Way Home, Holland confirmed reports that he’ll play the role of Hollywood icon Fred Astaire in a forthcoming film. (This might fall more into the Hollywood-biopic genre than the musician-biopic one, but Fred Astaire sang and tap-danced, so that makes him a musician, too.)
Amy Pascal, producer of the Spider-Man movies, recently told GQ that she wants Holland to play Astaire. While talking to reporters yesterday, Holland confirmed that he’s taking that role: “I am playing Fred Astaire. The script came in a week ago. I haven’t read it yet; they haven’t given it to me. I know that Amy Pascal has the script. She FaceTimed me earlier. I was in the bath, and we had a lovely FaceTime.”
Holland has plenty of history in dance. At the beginning of his career, Holland played the lead in the West End stage adaptation of the movie Billy Elliott. A few years ago, Holland also went mega-viral by miming both Gene Kelly and Rihanna on Lip-Sync Battle.
As Variety points out, Jamie Bell, the guy who played Billy Elliott in the movie, is also about to play Fred Astaire; he’s in a new Amazon Studios film opposite Margaret Qualley as Ginger Rogers. I wonder how all these new Astaire biopics are going to deal with the blackface thing.