Toronto: A gender-bending Canadian woman who fought and spied for the north during the American Civil War took a step closer to Hollywood recently when L.A. producers Michel Shane and Anthony Romano (Catch Me If You Can, I, Robot) optioned her life story.

The script Sara by Toronto writer Barry Brown recounts the adventures of New Brunswick-born Sara Edmonds who, after fleeing an arranged marriage in Canada, joined the Union army while disguised as a man. As "Frank Thompson" she then volunteered as a spy, burning her skin black with mercury so that she could pass as a (sometimes male, sometimes female) slave and infiltrate the Confederacy. Today, she's in the hall of fame for U.S. spies, and is the only woman buried in a cemetery for Civil War vets.

"This is a U.S. story couched in Canada. It could play to a North American audience beautifully," says Shane. He's currently looking for a director and says the picture may shoot as a Canada/U.K. copro.

"This is definitely a festival-type film," he says. "The script is so well written."

Brown, a longtime freelance reporter, stumbled upon the Edmonds story while working on a piece about Civil War re-enactments in Canada. Encouraged by his editor at Associated Press, and by a chance meeting with Boston entertainment lawyer Vinca Jarrett at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2001, he pieced together a script, drawing on an Edmonds biography and various historical documents.

He says he tried to keep the story true-to-life and true-to-period, while avoiding any undue sermons about race or the war. "I've been a reporter for many years, I still work by the old vows," says Brown. "When I see movie I'd rather make up my own mind about things."

The only significant change? A love interest. Little is known about the (most likely, very interesting) personal life of Edmonds, so a composite character was written in, a heartthrob preacher.

Brown submitted a first draft to Jarrett in 2002. Her feedback led to a series of rewrites, the fourth and final of which he handed in last spring. Jarrett passed it to Shane and Romano, who optioned it earlier this year. Romano and Shane also recently put together the teen comedy Band on the Run, and the thriller Triggerfish for Paramount.