Gal Gadot on Sunday announced her casting as Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, a new version of the tale famously told in the 1963 Elizabeth Taylor classic.
"As you might have heard I teamed up with @PattyJenks and @LKalogridis to bring the story of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, to the big screen in a way she’s never been seen before," Gadot tweeted. "To tell her story for the first time through women's eyes, both behind and in front of the camera."
In 2017, Patty Jenkins directed "Wonder Woman" with Gadot in its titular role and the two women will join forces again for the epic historical dramatization.
Laeta Kalogridis, screenwriter of "Shutter Island" and "Alita," will also join "Cleopatra."
"For the little Greek girl from central Florida who ran around in a cape pretending to be Diana of Themyscira, there’s only a LITTLE pressure here," Kalogridis tweeted, adding that Cleopatra was her "favorite Ptolemaic Pharoah and arguably the most famous Macedonian Greek woman in history."
Gadot ended with a shoutout to #InternationalDayoftheGirl, which fell on Sunday: "We hope women and girls all around the world, who aspire to tell stories will never give up on their dreams and will make their voices heard, by and for other women."
The announcement stirred some controversy online over Gadot's Israeli nationality, perhaps linked to the long-contentious relationship between the two modern nations.
Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty in 1979 and have maintained open borders since. However, some on Twitter complained that filmmakers were whitewashing history with Gadot's casting.
Others pointed out that Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, was of Macedonian descent, a modern country whose people today are identified as European.
Writer and media critic K. Tempest Bradford tweeted out a "heavy sigh" over the controversy.
"I feel the fight that's about to happen coming on and I am already ready to scream," Bradford wrote.
"Cuz some folks are gonna be like: but Cleopatra was Black this is whitewashing! Others will be like: Cleo was Greek, so shut up! And both camps will be both right and wrong."
Twitter user @BlackMajicMan90 said "Gal Gadot deserves this role," saying, "Cleopatra was Greek."
"Yes, she was an Egyptian ruler but she was Greek with Persian and Syrian ancestry. The people who are reacting negatively that to this are uneducated and uninformed."
Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and author of "Cleopatra: A Life," detailed her understanding of the Queen of Egypt's lineage.
"Of the 15 or so Ptolemaic marriages that precede Cleopatra’s, at least 10 are between siblings. Two others are between blood relatives as well," Schiff told NBC News. "In other words, there’s next to no chance that Cleopatra had anything other than Greek Macedonian blood."
Schiff said in the historical record there is barely any mention of an Egyptian mistress in Cleopatra's ancestry, though there "may have been a Persian princess in the mix," she said.
"But Cleopatra is wholly Greek; probably 'honey-skinned,' as other Ptolemaic relatives were described; similar, in her angular features, to her father," Schiff said.
