CBS Films has released a new trailer for their upcoming film, Beastly.  The film – directed by Daniel Barnz (Phoebe in Wonderland) – is a modern reimagining of Beauty and the Beast, which places the classic tale in a high school setting.  Alex Pettyfer (I Am Number 4) stars as a popular handsome high school student that finds himself turned into a beast, who then has one year to find someone who can love him so that he can reverse the curse.  The film also stars Vanessa Hudgens, Neil Patrick Harris, and Mary-Kate Olsen.  Beastly is set to open on March 18.  You can hit the jump to watch the trailer and check out 21 images:

With Dwayne Johnson’s Faster hitting theaters next week, CBS Films has provided us with 4 clips from Johnson’s return to kicking ass. While I’m under embargo from saying too much, I don’t think they’ll mind if I tell you Faster is exactly what I hoped it’d be:  a lean, violent, revenge flick that shows what Johnson can do when he’s not making family films.

What I especially like about the movie is that it never wastes time trying to give Johnson’s character too much backstory, or trying to make him out to be a saint.  The movie starts with him leaving jail and almost immediately he kills someone.  That’s Faster.  If you’re into watching Johnson going around extracting revenge on the folks that killed his brother, you’ll like this film.  Hit the jump to watch 4 clips.

Paul Haggis (Crash) is in talks to write and direct a remake of the Spanish action-thriller, Celda 211 (aka Cell 211) for CBS Films.  The 2009 Daniel Monzón-directed film swept the Goya Awards (basically the Spanish Oscars) — it won such awards as Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay.  The film tells the story of a prison guard who is knocked unconscious during his first day at work and wakes up to find himself stuck inside the prison during a riot.

Hit the jump to check out the Spanish trailer for Celda 211 and a full plot synopsis for the film, plus a look at where Cell 211 fits in the trend of foreign remakes.

Danish filmmaker Niels Arden Oplev, helmer of the critically-lauded adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, has signed on for CBS Film’s The Keep. Based on Jennifer Egan’s novel of the same title, the gothic thriller follows a pair of cousins who are forced to confront their childhood demons while restoring a secluded medieval castle. Scribe Ehren Kruger (The Ring) shopped the screenplay to Rogue Pictures in 2006, but the deal deflated with Relativity’s acquisition of the production house.  David Fincher is currently filming a re-adaptation of Dragon Tattoo with Daniel Craig in the starring role as muckraking journalist Mikael Blomkvist.

Hit the jump for a synopsis of The Keep as well as my thoughts on Oplev helming the adaptation.

A recent behind-the-scenes featurette shed some light on how Beastly, a teenage update on the Beauty and the Beast story, will approach its source material.  CBS Films has released a new trailer for the reimagining, which shows off Beastly‘s brooding tone amid a more narrative form.  The film stars Alex Pettyfer, Vanessa Hudgens, Neil Patrick Harris, and Mary-Kate Olsen; Daniel Barns (Phoebe in Wonderland) directed from his own script.

Check out the trailer–plus a look at the Beastly‘s potential–after the jump.

Screenwriter Jeremy Slater (seen right as an artist rendering of him informing people of the time) is set to write an untitled thriller set in an airport for DreamWorks with Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci producing and Mathew Cullen attached to direct.  THR has given me nothing else to write about the film itself, and while Jeremy Slater is a friend of the site, he won’t return answer my questions or return my calls no matter how many filthy, sexually explicit messages I leave on his answering machine.  In all seriousness, the dude is a great writer and one of the funniest people I know.  He also recently worked on the screenplay for the Paramount/MTV Films thriller Handsome Devil and has his spec script My Spy set up with producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura and CBS Films.  No disrespect to Slater but while I’m sure My Spy is good, it–like all other spy films–will never be as good as Spymate.

Orci and Kurtzman will continue their streak of producing everything (Fringe, The Defenders, Hawaii Five-0, Racing Dreams, Locke & Key, Deep Sea Cowboys, Atlantis Rising) to add to their writing credits for Star Trek, Transformers, and the upcoming Star Trek 2 and Cowboys & Aliens.

Last week I got to visit the set of Dwayne Johnson’s Faster and posted a preview of my set visit here.  While I wasn’t allowed to take pictures or video while on set, the folks at E.T. Canada didn’t have such restrictions and their video features Johnson talking about the movie and shows some of the action.  Since a trailer hasn’t been released yet, I figured you might want to check out the video.  Also, as I said in my write-up, I saw Johnson firing one of the largest hand guns I’ve ever seen.  The video shows the gun.

A new trailer/behind-the-scenes special for the teen fantasy-romance Beastly has hit the net.  Based on the best-selling 2007 novel of the same name by Alex Flinn, the film stars Alex Pettyfer, Vanessa Hudgens, Mary-Kate Olsen, and Neil Patrick Harris. An “edgy” modern-day retelling of the Beauty and the Beast story, it centers on the vain, douchey, and frequently shirtless 17-year-old Kyle Kingson (Pettyfer), who’s magically disfigured by a classmate/witch (Olsen) and given one year to find someone to love him for what’s on the inside or else be stuck with his “beastly” appearance for life; he promptly sets his sights on the pretty but previously “unnoticed” Linda Taylor (Hudgens). Hit the jump to check it out.

Opening this weekend is director Tom Vaughan’s (Starter for 10, What Happens in Vegas) Extraordinary Measures.  The movie is the first release from CBS Films and it’s inspired by the true story of John Crowley – someone who risked his family’s future to pursue a cure for his children’s life threatening disease.  Playing Crowley is Brendan Fraser and Harrison Ford stars as the brilliant but unconventional scientist who Crowley teams up with.

To help promote the film, I recently got to speak with Brendan Fraser.  We talked about how he got involved with the project, working with Harrison Ford, did he prepare for the film any differently as he was playing a real person, and what did he think about Avatar (has to do with a Journey to the Center of the Earth question).  Check out the interview after the jump:

When I found out I’d get the opportunity to speak with Harrison Ford for his new movie Extraordinary Measures, I’ll admit to being extremely excited and beyond nervous.  Not only because I’d finally win Celebrity Bingo…no, the reason I was nervous is that it’s HARRISON FORD! Han Solo. Indiana Jones. Jack Ryan. Rich Deckard. Dr. Richard Kimble.  Harrison Ford is someone I grew up idolizing and the opportunity to speak with him was an amazing experience.  Also, I’ve spoken to journalists who have been in the game for over a decade and they all told me Ford rarely does press.  I walked in knowing this might be the only time I ever interview this legend of cinema.  So yeah, no pressure.

But enough of with my anxiety.  The reason I got to speak with Ford is he’s out promoting Extraordinary Measures (which he executive produced), which is the first movie from CBS Films.  It’s inspired by the true story of John Crowley – someone who risked his family’s future to pursue a cure for his children’s life threatening disease.  Playing Crowley is Brendan Fraser and Harrison Ford stars as the brilliant but unconventional scientist who teams up with Crowley to find a cure.

During my limited time with Ford we talked about doing press, how the project came together, social networking like Twitter and Facebook, and I closed off the interview by asking about Blade Runner!  So what are you waiting for?  Watch the interview after the jump!

Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, Brooklyn’s Finest) has been tapped as the director of Consent to Kill, a spy thriller to be produced by CBS Films in conjunction with Lorenzo DiBonaventura. Consent to Kill will be the first big-screen adaptation of Vince Flynn’s popular Mitch Rapp series of novels. The Rapp books, full of intrigue, high stakes and action, have routinely appeared on The New York Times bestseller list and resulted in Flynn being a story consultant on the fifth season of 24. Jonathan Lemkin is the screenwriter, just as he was for Fuqua’s Shooter. Hit the jump for more script details as well as my thoughts on this latest attempt by CBS Films to establish itself in the industry.