Lily James to Star in ‘Young Woman and the Sea’ From ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ Team

Jerry Bruckheimer just can’t stay out of the water. The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise producer is teaming up with Dead Men Tell No Tales writer Jeff Nathanson to adapt Glenn Stout’s non-fiction book Young Woman and the Sea, with Cinderella’s Lily James on board to play Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel.

Deadline reports that James has been cast in the role of Gertrude “Trudy” Ederle, who swam the 21-mile English Channel in 1926, becoming the first woman to ever make that courageous journey. Ederle was a talented swimmer and olympic medalist who was sometimes referred to as “Queen of the Waves.” Following her amateur career and participation in the 1924 Olympics, Ederle trained for her Channel swim, which she successfully completed in 1926.

Although she acquired fame through her talents, Ederle soon disappeared from the public eye — she lost almost all of her hearing by 1940 and began teaching deaf children how to swim. She died in 2003 without ever marrying, and a recreation center was named in her honor in Manhattan. Here’s the official description of Stout’s book from Amazon:

In 1926, before skirt lengths inched above the knee and before anyone was ready to accept that a woman could test herself physically, a plucky American teenager named Trudy Ederle captured the imagination of the world when she became the first woman to swim the English Channel. It was, and still is, a feat more incredible and uncommon than scaling Mount Everest. Upon her return to the United States, “Trudy of America” became the most famous woman in the world. And just as quickly, she disappeared from the public eye.

Bruckheimer will produce Young Woman and the Sea, with Nathanson (who also wrote Catch Me If You Can and The Terminal) providing the screenplay and executive producing. James can be seen next in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and the epic BBC miniseries War and Peace. She was also recently cast in Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver.