as the Siphon, a well-trained alien assassin. Garry Marshall as Dr. Donald Harlan, a friend of Alex's and author of UFO-related books, who thinks he can "tell when people are lying to me". He is seen tricking Burke into going after him by trading cars with Jack. Tom Everett Scott as Mr. Matheson, a government agent working for Burke. Cheech Marin as Eddie Cortez, the auto mechanic who gets frustrated when people come to his shop in the middle of the night, when it is closed. Chris Marquette as Pope, one of Burke's agents. Eva Huang as Shira the UFO Huntress Billy Brown as Mr. Carson Dennis Hayden as Ray William J. Birnes, the host of UFO Hunters, in a cameo. Whitley Strieber, author of Communion, in a cameo. Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann, who portrayed Tia and Tony in the original Witch Mountain films of the 1970s, made cameo appearances in Race to Witch Mountain. Richards appears as a roadhouse waitress (named "Tina", a minor change from the character [Tia] she played in the 1975 and 1978 films) and Eisenmann appears as Sheriff Anthony (a reference to his character [Tony] from the previous films). Meredith Salenger, the star of Disney's 1985 adventure The Journey of Natty Gann has a cameo as a TV reporter named "Natalie Gann". Production Development of an Escape to Witch Mountain remake was announced in April 2001, with writing duties handed to Adam Kulakow. In July 2007, Walt Disney Pictures hired Andy Fickman to direct Witch Mountain, a "modern re-imagining" of Escape to Witch Mountain, using a script by Matt Lopez. The following August, Dwayne Johnson (most notably famous for portraying The Rock in the WWE) was cast into a lead role, with filming scheduled to begin in March 2008. Fickman did not describe the film as a remake, defining his production as "a new chapter within the world of Witch Mountain". The director also described the book, the original source of the films, as "a very cool dark thriller" and anticipated drawing elements from it that did not exist in the 1975 film. By March 2008 filmmakers were using a new script written by Mark Bomback: now re-titled Race to Witch Mountain, filming began in Los Angeles the same month. The convention center in Pomona, California was converted into the film's UFO Expo 9, and the interior of Witch Mountain was designed using photographs