The Random - Rum Diary, The 5th Quarter, SW: Clone Wars, Wolverine, Star Trek, Alvin and the Chipmunks 2, The Art of the Heist, The First Man and more

Aaron Eckhart and Richard Jenkins have joined Johnny Depp in The Rum Diary, Eckhart will play a wealthy rival to Depp’s boozy journalist, with both men seeking the pleasantries of Amber Heard. Jenkins (The Visitor, Step Brothers) will play Lotterman, the supervisor of the shoddy and troubled newspaper that employs Depp. Set in San Juan during the 1950s the adaptation was written and will be directed by Bruce Robinson (Withnail and I).

Rick Bieber, writer-director of The 5th Quarter, starring Aidan Quinn, Andie MacDowell and Ryan Merriman, is holding an Internet-based talent search to find original songs for the sports-themed film's soundtrack and is accepting submissions at the film's Web site... more

Cartoon Network announced that it has picked-up a second season of the CG-animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, from creator George Lucas and Lucasfilm Animation. Slated to premiere in the fall of 2009, the second season will continue to take audiences on new and exciting adventures, combining the legendary storytelling of Lucasfilm with innovative animation. More details

Storm was included as a cameo in a scene that won't make the final cut of X-Men Origins: Wolverine says producer Lauren Shuler Donner to Widescreen Vision. She adds that the film's final cut is coming in well under two hours, and the DVD won't have much in the way of deleted scenes.

Paramount Pictures has announced that a third trailer for J.J. Abrams' Star Trek is planned to be in theaters starting on Friday, March 6th with Watchmen. The trailer will then go online the following Monday March 9th at Apple.com.

Zachary Levi (NBC's "Chuck") has been cast opposite the computer-generated singing rodents of Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel for Fox 2000 says The Hollywood Reporter. Levi will play the cousin of Jason Lee's character and gets tangled up with the tiny animated threesome. Justin Long, Matthew Gray Gubler and Jesse McCartney again will provide the chipmunks' voices.

William Monahan ("The Departed," "Kingdom of Heaven") have acquired The Art of the Heist, the forthcoming memoirs of career criminal Myles Connor reports Variety. Connor became an art connoisseur and a rock musician whose band, Myles and the Wild Ones, backed Roy Orbison. He was also an accomplished art and antiques thief who was involved in a series of museum robberies that grabbed headlines in Boston in the 1970s and 1980s. Quentin Curtis will produce the film.

Sam Rockwell has joined Hilary Swank in the legal drama Betty Anne Waters for Omega Entertainment says The Hollywood Reporter. The film is based on the true story of Waters (Swank), an unemployed single mother who saw her brother convicted for a murder-robbery in 1983 and sentenced to life in prison. Convinced of his innocence, she spent the next decade earning a law degree and working on her brother's case. Rockwell plays the brother, while Minnie Driver also has a role in the movie.

The First Man, the final unfinished work of French existentialist author Albert Camus, is getting a film adaptation. Variety reports that Italian director Gianni Amelio ("The Way We Laughed," "Stolen Children") will make his French-language debut on the $11.6 million project about 40-year-old Jacques Cormery who returns to his native pre-civil war Algeria and relives his childhood. Jacques Gamblin will play Cormery, while Claudia Cardinale plays his beautiful but deaf and distant mother.

MTV talked with Brett Ratner recently and got some updates on the Beverley Hills Cop film. It will be a "hard R" and that instead of Beverly Hills Cop 4, it'll just be called Beverly Hills Cop.

ComingSoon spoke to director Andy Fickman (Race to Witch Mountain) and found out that the zombie classic I Walked With a Zombie will be the first of four of their own horror classics that RKO Pictures are planning to remake with Twisted Pictures (Saw)

Dirk Blackman and Howard McCain are adapting the comic ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction which was created by Kevin Grevioux, the writer of Underworld, and follows an elite team of soldiers who are sent on a covert mission into enemy territory in the Middle East. However once there they realise that the enemy is not the standard enemy, and are in fact an army of undead humans created by some secret government project. The Hollywood Reporter.

According to Variety Ralph Fiennes is making his directorial debut with an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Roman tragedy Coriolanus. The play is set in the early years of the Roman Republic and is said to be one of his strongest examinations of how power corrupts.

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