Kristin Kreuk, who played Clark Kent’s love interest Lana Lang for nearly a decade on the CW’s Smallville, is returning to the network as the star of a new version of Beauty and the Beast. Kreuk will star in the pilot episode of the new series, which is being written by Jennifer Levin and Sherri Cooper.  No announcement has yet been made about who will play her feral co-star.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Kreuk will play the role that Linda Hamilton did in the 1980s series that debuted on CBS in 1987.  Kreuk won’t be the only actress assaying the role of Beauty. ABC, which has had success with the fantasy-based Once Upon a Time series, has also ordered a pilot episode of a Beauty and the Beast series (see “Battling Beauty & the Beasts”), and Guillermo del Toro has just signed on to helm a movie version of the public domain saga starring Emma Watson as the eponymous object of desire (see “Del Toro to Helm Beauty and the Beast Movie”).

The pilot for the new series is being produced by CBS Television and is supposedly closest in spirit to the 1980s TV series of all the current B&B projects.  Of course there is no telling whether either of the Beauty & the Beast pilots ever makes it to full-fledged series status, and the Beauty & the Beast movie is probably even less of a sure thing given the track records of all involved and the difficulty in mounting a major movie project.