2026 has, by any metric, been a huge vintage year for Tom Holland. He's entered the Nolanverse and earned rave reviews for his performance in Christ
2026 has, by any metric, been a huge vintage year for Tom Holland. He’s entered the Nolanverse and earned rave reviews for his performance in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. He’s about to thwip back onto our screens as everyone’s favourite genial neighbourhood in Destin Daniel Cretton’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day. And he’s both starred in a Pepsi advert with Lionel Messi and married his beloved Zendaya. But while Holland could’ve been forgiven for taking a siesta after a seriously rammed summer, the 30-year-old actor isn’t slowing down: he’s limbering up to finally make his long-gestating Fred Astaire biopic with Wonka director Paul King. Check out the man himself giving an update on the ambitious undertaking to Good Morning America below (skip to 3:30 approx.);
“We have Fred Astaire next, that’s what we’re planning on doing,” said Holland when asked what he had coming up after Brand New Day, which hits cinemas on 29 July. “And as soon as I finish with these tours, I’m diving back into the dance studio.” Elaborating on his prep to play arguably the big screen’s greatest and most iconic dancer, Holland — who, lest we forget, started out playing Billy Elliot on the West End — revealed that rehearsals have already begun on the film. “I did my first few rehearsals recently, and it both filled me with excitement and absolute dread because I’ve got so much work to do to try and do Fred proud,” he shared, excitingly adding that he has “a desire to use no doubles, to do all of the dancing, to shoot those dances in one shot – how [Astaire] would have done it.”
Set to be directed by King from a script by Fosse/Verdon and the Tick, Tick… BOOM! movie writer Steven Levenson, Holland’s Fred Astaire biopic is expected to centre around the legendary performer’s relationship with sister Adele Astaire, tracing their journey from straightforward midwestern Vaudeville act to Broadway, the West End, and beyond — first together as a duo, then apart, as Adele settled down while Fred’s star rose to the Hollywood heights.
While much has been made of the decision to make an Astaire biopic when the man himself always made it explicitly clear while alive that he never wanted to see his story dramatised, in the right hands — which King, Holland, and Levenson’s certainly appear to be — Fred Astaire’s story is an inspirational one, well worth telling, and one that could bring the dancer’s brilliance to a whole recent generation. Here’s hoping the film will be Top Hat, and won’t leave us pulling a Funny Face…
