Friday’s openings: Beauty goes beastly live-action

Disney releases its live-action version of "Beauty and the Beast," and that's the main story of the mainstream releases for the coming week. The national schedule offers a couple of other offerings, but those are — as always — iffy for the local scene.

As of now, the potential look of Friday's openings is as follows:

"Beauty and the Beast": Emma Watson stars as Belle in this Bill Condon-directed adaptation of the fairly tale turned book turned movie turned cartoon turned musical turned, again, movie. Or somewhat in that order.

"The Belko Experiment": Put a bunch of people in a building, cut off all the exits and then tell them to kill one another — or they die. There, that's my pitch in 23 words! Whaddaya think?

"T2 Trainspotting": It's 20 years later and Danny Boyle reunites his cast of Scottish druggies (including Ewan McGregor) for another go-around. Choose life. Choose a job, Choose a career. Again.

And at the Magic Lantern:

"My Scientology Movie": Broadcaster/filmmaker Louis Theroux documents his attempts to reveal the workings of the Church of Scientology. And, for the record, L. Ron Hubbard died on Jan. 24, 1986.

The Lantern will also pick up a run of "A United Kingdom."

I'll have the final listings when they become available.