EXCLUSIVE: Gal Gadot has teamed with producing partner and husband Jaron Varsano to form Pilot Wave, a production company that will get started with the fact-based historical thriller Irena Sendler. Gadot will star as the title character for Warner Bros, and she and Varsano will produce with Marc Platt.
Irena Sendler tells the harrowing story of a woman’s defiant stand against Polish Nazi occupation and the incredible network she developed to care for and save 2500 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto. Following her arrest by the Gestapo during the height of the war, the drama becomes a race against time to save not only herself but the identities of the hidden thousands who’ll face certain execution. Justine Juel Gillmer will be writing the screenplay. She just wrote another harrowing Holocaust film, Harry Haft. Gillmer has worked in film and television in her native Australia, and has worked on numerous shows in the U.S. including The 100, Into the Badlands, and is now serving as a writer/co-EP on Amazon’s Wheel of Time.
“As producers, we want to help bring stories that have inspired us to life,” Gadot and Varsano said. “Pilot Wave will create content that promotes the perspectives and experiences of unique people and produce impactful stories aimed at igniting the imagination.”
Gadot, who has Wonder Woman 1984 coming next summer (she is also a producer on the film) is currently starring for Kenneth Branagh in Death on the Nile and next stars with Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds in Red Notice for Netflix, has several previously announced film projects that Pilot Wave will be part of with Gadot and Varsano producing. They include My Dearest Fidel, a potential star vehicle for Gadot that Chris Brancato is writing, and a team up with Sue Kroll and Warner Bros on the limited series Hedy Lamarr, with Gadot playing the famed actress/inventor for Showtime. The Affair‘s Sarah Treem will write that, and be executive producer with Warren Littlefield.
Gadot and Varsano are represented by WME and Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern.