Emma Watson will be Beast’s belle

Disney’s live-action Cinderella hits theaters very soon. The Jungle Book, from Jon Favreau, is also in the pipeline. Now comes the live-action adaptation of the acclaimed animated feature Beauty and The Beast. It’ll be directed by Dreamgirls’ Bill Condon and contain all the Alan Menken/Howard Ashman songs from the original film, including some new music from Menken. And it stars Hermoine. Oh, all right, yes Emma Watson. But, really, how perfect is that casting? The smartest girl at Hogwarts is now the book-loving, Beast-resisting Belle. Watson recently announced it all, quite excitedly, on Facebook, with the promise that she’d be taking singing lessons (though it stands to reason she can already carry a tune) and everything gets rolling later this year, probably for Christmas 2016 if we cared to guess. One request, though, Disney? At the end of the animated version, when the Beast turned into that bland, Ken-doll-style prince, we all wished he’d just change back into the big, hairy, sexy monster. So try not to make that mistake again? We good?

Lea Michele and Ariana Grande: Ryan Murphy’s new Scream Queens

Lea Michele’s Glee days are numbered. That’s because Glee’s days are numbered, the final season airing as we speak. And rather than move on to something completely different, the show’s star is planning to stay safely within the Ryan Murphy fold as the star of his new series, Scream Queens. It’ll be an anthology series set on a college campus suffering from an unfortunate murder spree (although, much like American Horror Story, we wonder how long it will be before they start singing and bringing in Stevie Nicks to kick everything up a notch). Michele will join the cast that already includes Emma Roberts, Abigail Breslin, Joe Manganiello, recurring player Ariana Grande, and the Grand Dame of All Scream Queens, Jamie Lee Curtis.  So yeah, the former godfather of weird high schools (remember, Murphy also gave us Popular) has now become TV’s horror master. Stay tuned for its premiere this fall, and get ready to scream, queens.

X-Men: the TV show. How soon is soon?

Fox has confirmed that they are developing an X-Men TV series. That’s it, really. That’s the entirety of the news. Execs have confirmed talks with Marvel, and there’s a vague idea that the project will be based on Peter David’s X-Factor series of comics, which won a GLAAD Media Award in 2011. And why is that? Well, in case you’ve never paid any attention to the X-Men, they are mutants whose battles with the conformist world are somewhat analogous to many aspects of the gay cultural experience. The movies have mined similar territory. You can be sure that as this moves along at what is already being called a "slow" path, we’ll report on every relevant detail. Go back to whatever other nerd business you were dealing with.

Jack Black climbs aboard The D Train

Like it or not, it was the spoiler heard ’round Park City. Because, really, gone are the pre-Internet days when a film like The Crying Game could count on the public not to know about a secret plot twist, and could even use the unspoiled secret as fodder for its own marketing campaign. But here in 2015, the minute The D Train premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, word was out and burning up the internet. It all revolves around one scene of the indie comedy, and without getting too detailed, let’s say that it features Jack Black (note to reader: the rest of this story involves plot you might not want to know about, starting... NOW) and James Marsden and a sexy development between their characters, two former high school classmates planning a reunion. And that’s why you’re reading about it here. Frankly we love any movie that features bear-on-chaser action, and now we can’t wait to see it. Also, we figure we know what the "D" stands for. Hurry up and come soon to a theater near us, movie.