Weaver to star as
Gypsy Lee Rose in HBO film

Sigourney Weaver will star in HBO's Gypsy and Me as burlesque artist Gypsy Rose Lee, reports Michael Fleming on Variety.com.

Weaver will executive-produce the film with Dreamgirls producer Laurence Mark, and the film will be shot before the end of 2007.

Martin Sherman (Mrs. Henderson Presents) is writing the script. The film is based on the memoir My G-string Mother: At Home andBackstage With Rose Lee, written by Lee's son, Erik Lee Preminger, who by age 12 was her stage manager. He did not find out until after his mother's death that his father was film director Otto Preminger.

The film is set at the end of Lee's striptease career in the late 1950s. She became a best-selling author after she decided she was too old for stripping and got her story adapted as a musical. (The Advocate)