Andrew Davies Set to Write BEAUTY AND THE BEAST for Guillermo del Toro to Direct; Emma Watson Will Star

One of the many, many projects currently on director Guillermo del Toro’s plate is an adaptation of Beauty and the Beast. We first learned of the update last summer, and del Toro said at the time that he’d love for Harry Potter actress Emma Watson to star. Now it appears that the pic has firmed up quite a bit, as Variety reports that Bridget Jones’s Diary scribe Andrew Davies has been tapped to write the script and Watson is in final negotiations to star in the Warner Bros. pic. The plan is for del Toro to write a treatment, which Davies will then work off of for the script. When the project was initially conceived, del Toro stated his intention to keep the period setting of the original story. No word on whether or not that has changed.

Del Toro is currently busy filming Pacific Rim, so it will likely be a while before he can devote himself to Beauty and the Beast full time. Hopefully Davies can get to work on the script while del Toro finishes up post-production on Pacific Rim. In addition to Bridget Jones, Davies also wrote The Three Musketeers, Brideshead Revisited, and the miniseries Little Dorrit. Having wrapped the Harry Potter franchise, Watson is next set to reteam with Potter director David Yates on Your Voice in My Head.