Here's your dose of quick news bits for Jan. 19, 2009...

• Believe it or not, but Casey Affleck will direct a documentary about retired actor Joaquin Phoenix's music career. I'm sure by now you've all heard Phoenix quit acting to become a - guess what - rapper. He's currently working on an album produced by Sean Combs. (The Hollywood Reporter)

• In a recent interview with MTV, actor J.K. Simmons said he would return as J. Jonah Jameson in "Spider-Man 4," which will shoot in 2010 for a 2011 release. “We’ve definitely brainstormed ideas for Triple-J, but I have no desire to make Triple-J more of the focus of those movies. The amount that I did in 1, 2 and 3, is just exactly right," he said.

• Roland Emmerich will direct the big-screen version of Isaac Asimov's sci-fi trilogy "Foundation," which Columbia recently acquired. Variety says the story follows a "psycho-historian who can scientifically read the future sees an imminent empire collapse and prepares to save the knowledge of mankind."

• Antoine Fuqua is planning a biopic about Gregory Scarpa Sr., an FBI informant and chief enforcer for the Colombo crime family. "It's called 'Scarpa' with Morgan Creek, and it's New York again, Brooklyn, FBI, Italian gangsters, it takes place from the '60s to the '90s, and we're talking to Sean Penn," he told ComingSoon.

Casey Affleck and Jessica Alba have signed on to star in Michael Winterbottom’s “The Killer Inside Me,” based on the novel by Jim Thompson.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the film stars Affleck as a West Texas sheriff and focuses on his transition from a boring cop into a ruthless murderer. Alba plays a prostitute.

Thompson’s novel first made it to the big screen in 1976, with Stacy Keach starring.

Winterbottom’s directing credits include “Welcome to Sarajevo,” “In this World” and “A Mighty Heart.”

As for Affleck, he had a solid last year, starring in “Ocean’s Thirteen,” “Gone Baby Gone” and “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.”

Alba was last seen in “The Love Guru.” She is currently shooting “An Invisible Sign of My Own.”