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You may be interested in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cython which was a fork of Pyrex which dates back to the very early noughties. It is basically as you describe and even has a way to "bypass the GIL" in extension modules. There is also an easy way to create a "compiled script" using `--embed`. This is essentially a gradually typed system [1] like the Common Lisp `declare` facility. Cython even has a warning system to tell you what you forgot to declare, and an annotated HTML generator to highlight "more Python C API heavy" portions of your code.
Personally, I think going all the way to Nim [2] is more satisfying than a "gradually typed" system, though.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gradual_typing
[2] https://nim-lang.org/
https://github.com/py2many/py2many/blob/main/doc/langspec.md
Reimplement a large enough, commonly used subset of python stdlib using this dialect and we may be in the business of writing cross platform apps (perhaps start with android and Ubuntu/Gnome)
Nim has impressive compile-time reflection which with its syntax macro system can (some of the time) get you similar powers to Python's dynamic reflection. E.g., https://github.com/c-blake/cligen instead of `autocommand` or `click` or `argh` or you name the automatic CLI generator, only with full C-like speed for your programs and a very low effort FFI to C. People have done web frameworks, too, but I do not know them well enough to compare to Django. Perhaps someone else could follow-up.
Compile times are not the 25-50 ms of a python interpreter startup, but they are similar to the 250-500 ms of a Go or D compile, at least for small light on metaprogramming loops kinds of programs, and with, say, the TinyC tcc backend.
You might look at Deno[0] which provides that scripting language experience, similar to python.
[0] https://deno.land
> Many languages have libraries for ANSI color support and pretty printing, but no other language has Rich:
https://github.com/ajalt/mordant