The following cast summary was taken from Production Weekly, which is a–let’s see if you can guess–weekly production newsletter–and was found by the same TwiMom responsible for the previous Production Weekly post with a summary we hadn’t seen before.

“THE TWILIGHT SAGA’S NEW MOON” Feature Film 02-12-09

VOLTERRA FM PRODUCTIONS CANADA INC.

STATUS – March 23 LOCATION – Vancouver – Italy

PRODUCER: Patrick Wachsberger – Wyck Godfrey WRITER: Melissa Rosenberg DIRECTOR: Chris Weitz LP: Bill Bannerman PM: Barbara Kelly

CAST: Robert Pattinson – Kristen Stewart – Taylor Lautner – Billy Burke – Gil Birmingham – Peter Facinelli -Elizabeth Reaser -Ashley Greene – Jackson Rathbone – Kellan Lutz – Nikki Reed – Dakota Fanning

All is not well between demon-magnet Bella and Edward Cullen, her vampire Romeo. An innocent papercut at Edward’s house puts Bella in grave danger when various members of the Cullen family can barely resist their hunger at the smell of blood. The Cullens promptly leave town, afraid of endangering Edward’s beloved, and Bella sinks into an overwhelming depression. Months later, she finally emerges from her funk to rebuild her life, focusing on her friendship with besotted teen Jacob from the reservation. Bella’s unhealthy enthrallment to Edward leads her into dangerous and self-destructive behavior despite her new friends, and supernatural complications are bound to reappear. Bella’s being hunted by an evil vampire, and Jacob’s adolescent male rage turns out to be incipient lycanthropy: It seems many Quileute Indians become werewolves in the presence of vampires, their natural enemies. (March 23 – May 20 / will shoot in the ancient Tuscan city of Volterra for two weeks in May – Release date Nov. 20, 2009)  

Of note is that Dakota Fanning is now listed as in the cast–so she may have officially signed. But, at the same time, it also claims the film will be shooting in Volterra–which as we just reported, is still up in the air.

UPDATE: As I mentioned in the last paragraph, this doesn’t mean Fanning is definitely in, since the information is not consistent with other news we’re hearing. The ever-lovable Twilight Lexicon makes the point even more succinctly–

Now here’s the thing were not saying Dakota won’t eventually be cast because that’s honestly our gut impression here based on a number of factors. However, we are not so sure this is 100% official yet:
1. It doesn’t make any sense for this confirmation not to have been picked up by Mark Malkin, Nikki Finke, and several others given that they all had the insider track. The Dakota Fanning story leaked like a sieve. It seems odd that they’d allow themselves to get upstaged by a two-week old production memo that lots of people had access to.
2. The cast list (other than Rob, Kristen, and Taylor who obviously have top billing in that order) are in alphabetical order. Dakota’s name got stuck in at the end. It seems weird that the format would not be consistent especially in Hollywood where name position is everything

Dakota Fanning already has a bit of experience acting with wolves–this photo is from a January 2007 Vanity Fair photoshoot that Chanel fashion designer Karl Lagerfield directed. Here’s the behind-the-scenes vid:

Re: Dakota Fanning has signed [via TwiCrack]