The official site for the upcoming "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" has seen its cast section undergo some interesting (albeit temporary) updating today.

The Raider.Net first alerted me to the changes and I checked it out, sure enough in the wee hours of Friday morning US time the casting section listed most of the main actors and their character names. The whole section has since been pulled however, reasons unknown.

In any case when it was up, the site seemed to confirm the long standing rumor which Dark Horizons first broke back in June - that John Hurt would be playing the long thought-dead Abner Ravenwood (father of Karen Allen's character Marion). As recently as last month, producer Frank Marshall denied the talk of Abner's appearance in the film.

Meanwhile the site also lists "Star Wars" actor Ian McDiarmid as playing the role of Professor Levi in the new film. This is surprising as McDiarmid played the role of Professor Levi, a friend of Indy's father living in Paris, in a 1993 episode of "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles" in which Indy has a torrid affair with Mata Hari.

As the action of this film is set in 1957, forty-one years after the events of that episode, McDiarmid would have to play the character as in his late eighties (that is unless a flashback element is a part of the action).

Also today, the official site has a new behind-the-scenes clip about Shia LaBeouf's work on the film which can be seen here. There's also a new shot of Cate Blanchett's character along with a high res version of that photo from Entertainment Weekly a few weeks back. Both can be found below: