Two veteran directors have added a couple of very talented actors to their next films.  First up, Jason Schwartzman has signed on to star alongside Christoph Waltz, Amy Adams, and Krysten Ritter in director Tim Burton’s true story Big Eyes.  The story focuses on the artistic coupling of Margaret (Adams) and Walter (Waltz) Keane.  Walter became famous in the 1950s and 60s for paintings featuring saucer-eyed kids, though it was the shy Margaret who really did the work.  Margaret eventually tired of the misplaced credit, which led to a divorce and a heated court battle to prove authorship of the paintings.

It’s refreshing to see Burton stepping out of his comfort zone casting-wise with this film, as Schwartzman makes yet another Burton-newbie added to the cast.  The Wrap reports that the actor will play a San Francisco art gallery owner named Ruben in the film.  Hit the jump for casting news concerning Ron Howard’s next film. 

Additionally, Cillian Murphy has joined the cast of director Ron Howard’s adaptation of the Nathaniel Philbrick novel In the Heart of the Sea.  The book recounts the real life sea disaster of the whaleship Essex, a harrowing ordeal that inspired Herman Melvilee’s Moby Dick.  In 1819, the ship was rammed by an angry sperm whale in the South Pacific.  The surviving crew drifted for 90 days in three tiny whaleboats and encountered disease, hunger, and eventually cannibalism.

Chris Hemsworth is poised to topline the film alongside Tom Holland and Benjamin Walker, and now Deadline reports that Murphy has been cast as the ship’s second mate.  Production will get underway around London (on the sea, naturally) in mid-September of this year.