CBS FILMS DENIES IT’S IN TROUBLE

Just because CBS Films moved its planned July 30 release of Beastly, starring Vanessa Hudgens, from July of this year to March of next year doesn’t mean the recently launched film unit is in trouble, executives of the company have told TheWrap.com. The decision, which leaves the studio without a single summer release, comes after Extraordinary Measures, the studio’s first film, flopped with just $14.5 million worldwide, despite being headlined by Harrison Ford. It’s second film, The Back-up Plan, is likely to show a profit, however. One CBS Films official said that the move to shift Beastly, which reportedly cost less than $20 million to make, to next spring gets it out of the way of serious blockbuster competition — in particular the big-budget (reportedly $60 million) romantic drama Charlie St. Cloud, which stars Hudgens’s High School Musical co-star Zac Efron. Moving the movie to March also allows CBS Films to exploit the promotion that rival Disney will be lavishing on Hudgens’s co-star, Alex Pettyfer, who is now virtually unknown, as part of its marketing campaign for the Michael Bay/Steven Spielberg-produced sci-fi film I Am Number Four, which also co-stars Pettyfer. But some studio execs aren’t buying the studio’s explanations. An unnamed distribution head at a rival studio told TheWrap: “This move says they don’t know what the future of the company is. … This doesn’t bode well.”