Pettyfer announces I Am Number Four

Brit actor Alex Pettyfer has been making a stab of it Stateside for a while, with his upcoming Beastly rendering him almost unrecognisable (below).

Well, he’s obviously doing an okay job of it, as he can officially count pals in Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg, who have cast him in their film production I Am Number Four .

The flick, to be produced at DreamWorks Studios, is a high school-based alien yarn, based on the book by James Frey and Jobie Hughes.

Pettyfer will take the lead as an alien who, along with others of his species, escapes the destruction of his planet by a malicious species and hides on Earth as a teenager.

But he soon discovers that the evil-doers responsible for the destruction of his planet are now hunting him on Earth.

We’re thinking Roswell meets The Faculty – and you may as well throw in a little Superman lore there too, seeing as Smallville creators/writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar have written the script.

DJ Caruso will be directing, which sounds about right, the director having made a name for himself in teen-friendly fare like Dark Angel , Smallville , Disturbia and Eagle Eye .

You can check out Pettyfer in Beastly when it's released this September.

Read the book? Looking forward to this?

Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.