Last we heard from Selena Gomez, the pop star had just collaborated with K-pop sensations BLACKPINK, as well as purchased Tom Petty’s former California mansion. Gomez has now found her next big project: the 28-year-old has just been cast to star in a new biopic about Silvia Vásquez-Lavado, the first openly gay woman to ascend the highest mountain on each continent, a.k.a. the Seven Summits.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the forthcoming film is titled In the Shadow of the Mountain and based on a forthcoming memoir of the same name by Vásquez-Lavado, who is also credited with being the first Peruvian woman to scale Mt. Everest. Elgin James (Little Birds, FX’s Mayan’s M.C.) has been tapped to write and direct the movie, while Oscar winner Donna Gigliotti (Shakespeare in Love, Silver Linings Playbook) will produce via her Tempesta Films company. Gomez’s July Moon and Scott Budnick’s One Community are also serving as producers.
When she isn’t making mountaineering history, Vásquez-Lavado, a survivor of childhood assault, works to empower and inspire women in the great outdoors and beyond. One of her regular efforts involves organizing Mt. Everest adventures for women who have also experienced abuse.
“Silvia is a force of nature,” Gigliotti told THR. “Scott and I are so excited to work with Elgin and Selena to tell this story of resilience, courage, adventure and humanity.”
A targeted release date for the new biopic hasn’t been given, but Vásquez-Lavado’s memoir is expected to hit store shelves in late 2022.
Although Gomez has mostly made her mark in the music world — she released her Rare album this past January — she’s popped up in the occasional Hollywood film. In 2012, she partied it up in Spring Breakers, and just last year she was part of Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die.