Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot to play Christian woman who helped Jewish children in WWII

"Wonder Woman" star Gal Gadot has joined the cast of a new movie about a Christian woman who put herself at great risk to help save over 2,500 Jewish children during the Nazi occupation of Poland in World War II. 

According to Deadline, the production company set up by her husband, Jaron Varsano, is working on the movie "Irena Sendler" about the WWII heroine of the same name. 

Gadot, who was born in Israel to a Jewish family, has been cast in the lead role as Sendler, who never gave up the locations of the children she helped to smuggle out of the Warsaw Ghetto despite being tortured and sentenced to death. 

The children were smuggled out sometimes through sewer pipes, in coffins or underneath stretchers, to Polish families, convents or orphanages. 

In the end, her life was spared when her jailers were bribed into letting her go. 

She died in 2008 at the age of 98 and was honoured by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial in Israel, as a "beacon of light to the world, inspiring hope and restoring faith in the innate goodness of mankind."

"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," a description of the movie reads.

The movie will be co-produced by Varsano and Platt, who has worked on films like "Aladdin", "Mary Poppins Returns" and "Legally Blonde". 

"As producers, we want to help bring stories that have inspired us to life," Gadot and Varsano said, according to Deadline.

"Pilot Wave will create content that promotes the perspectives and experiences of unique people and produce impactful stories aimed at igniting the imagination."