Christopher Guest, best known for his roles in Spinal Tap and The Princess Bride, will play Ivan the Terrible in Fox’s Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.

Guest will join returning cast members Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Ricky Gervais, and Owen Wilson, along with other newcomers Amy Adams as Amelia Earhart, Hank Azaria as a pharaoh, and Bill Hader as General Custer.

This is supposedly a very small cameo role for Guest, but still, it’s the damn Six-Fingered Man!

Shawn Levy will again direct this sequel to the 2006 comedy adventure. Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon wrote the script and also apparently have a tiny part in the sequel as the Wright Brothers.

Of note is the fact that the first movie, which has grossed $574 million worldwide, was released in December and was marketed as a family holiday film, much like the first Narnia movie, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Fox is moving the Museum sequel to a summer tentpole slot in May, which proved to be an unwise choice for Disney’s Prince Caspian. Museum 2 is looking at a May 22, 2009 release, which puts it in a staring contest with Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins.

I can’t say I was huge on Night at the Museum because that movie was the moment where I realized that I couldn’t really take the character that Ben Stiller was in every movie anymore, but if I replace him in my brain with actors I like, it becomes a much more enjoyable little family movie, so who knows what this one may bring. If they tone him down and up the great supporting cast, I could be in!

[Source: Empire]