NATIONAL TREASURE:
BOOK OF SECRETS
Production Information Page 1
Walt Disney Pictures’ and Jerry Bruckheimer Films’ action-packed NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS reunites the stars of the blockbuster 2004 film (which amassed a worldwide box-office total of $347,451,894) —NICOLAS CAGE, JON VOIGHT, HARVEY KEITEL, DIANE KRUGER and JUSTIN BARTHA—along with producer JERRY BRUCKHEIMER and director/producer JON TURTELTAUB. For this second “National Treasure” adventure, the story expands into a global adventure and introduces new cast members ED
HARRIS and HELEN MIRREN.
For Ben Gates (Nicolas Cage), history isn’t just a dry record of what’s occurred in a distant and half-forgotten past…for him, history is alive, vital, and occasionally it offers the possibility of finding extraordinary treasures. After his astonishing discovery of the riches of the Templar Knights, Ben has become the world’s most famous treasure hunter…although he
prefers the term “treasure protector.” In NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS, Ben and his father, university professor Patrick Gates (Jon Voight), are shaken by the discovery of one of the long-lost pages from the diary of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth.
The diary was found on Booth’s body when he was killed; however, several pages had been torn from the diary and have never been found…until now. Surprisingly, the information on this page seems to implicate their ancestor Thomas Gates as a co-conspirator in the assassination of President Lincoln.
Ben must work with his now ex-girlfriend, American history archivist Abigail Chase (Diane Kruger), and his tech-wiz partner, Riley Poole (Justin Bartha), in a globe-trotting adventure which dangerously criss-crosses the inner sanctums of Washington, D.C., Paris, London and
the American heartland.
As Ben, Patrick, Abigail and Riley meticulously unravel clues which threaten to turn history, and their lives, completely upside down, their search for historical truth widens into a hunt for perhaps the most mysterious and highly guarded book on earth and, from that, to a famed mythological treasure. Much to Patrick’s consternation, Ben calls upon a secret weapon—his formidable mother and Patrick’s ex-wife, linguistics professor Emily Appleton (Helen Mirren), who hasn’t spoken to Patrick in 32 years. She is soon caught up in the intrigue, but the team is not alone in its pursuit. The man who brought the lost page to Ben’s attention, Mitch Wilkinson (Ed Harris), has his own family history to uncover. But his ambitions are less noble than merely discovering treasure, putting him on a deadly collision course with the others in a desperate effort to uncover the secrets that lie beneath the halfburnt diary page from America’s past.
PRODUCTION INFORMATION
Academy Award®-winning actor Nicolas Cage once again stars as Ben Gates in Walt Disney Pictures’/Jerry Bruckheimer Films’NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS,
an all-new epic adventure which combines action, humor, and history in the same successful
recipe which made “National Treasure” such an international box-office success in 2004.
Cage is joined by two more Oscar®-winning stars, with Jon Voight (“Transformers”) reprising his role as Patrick Gates, Ben’s irascible father; and Helen Mirren (“The Queen”) as Dr. Emily Appleton, Ben’s mother and Patrick’s long-estranged wife, who reluctantly becomes swept up in her falies pursuit for the truth.
Also returning to NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS are Harvey Keitel as FBI Special Agent Sadusky, whose respect for Ben is tempered by his obligation to arrest him; Diane Kruger as the beautiful, scholarly Abigail Chase, who shares Ben’s passion for history; and Justin Bartha as Ben’s hilarious, cyber-savvy partner, Riley Poole.
They are joined by four-time Academy Award® nominee Ed Harris as Mitch Wilkinson, whose defense of his own family background stands in direct confrontation to the legacy of the Gates family. Also appearing in the film is Bruce Greenwood (“Déjà Vu,” “Thirteen Days”) as the President of the United States, who might hold the key to unlocking the past so aggressively
sought by Ben Gates.
The executive producers of NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS are MIKE STENSON, CHAD OMAN, BARRY WALDMAN, OREN AVIV and CHARLES SEGARS. The screenwriters are THE WIBBERLEYS, from a story by GREGORY POIRIER and THE WIBBERLEYS & TED ELLIOTT & TERRY ROSSIO.
The filmmakers have assembled a topflight team of behind-the-scenes artists for NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS, many of them veterans of either the first “National Treasure” film or other Jerry Bruckheimer productions, including directors of photography JOHN SCHWARTZMAN (Oscar® nominee for “Seabiscuit,” Jerry Bruckheimer’s productions of “The Rock,” “Armageddon” and “Pearl Harbor”) and AMIR MOKRI (Bruckheimer’s “Bad Boys II” and “Coyote Ugly”), production designer DOMINIC WATKINS (“Bad Boys II,” “United 93”), costume designer JUDIANNA MAKOVSKY (“National Treasure,” three-time Oscar® nominee for “Pleasantville,” “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” and “Seabiscuit”), film editors WILLIAM GOLDENBERG (“National Treasure,” Academy Award® nominee for “Seabiscuit” and “The Insider”) and DAVID RENNIE (“Office Space” and “The Kid”), composer TREVOR RABIN (music for 10 Bruckheimer films, including “National Treasure,” “Armageddon,” “Enemy of the State” and “Bad Boys II”), stunt coordinator and second unit director GEORGE MARSHALL RUGE (“National Treasure,” “Pirates of the Caribbean” trilogy, “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy), visual effects supervisors NATHAN McGUINNESS (“National Treasure,” “Black Hawk Down,” Academy Award® nominee for “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World”) and MITCHELL S. DRAIN (“Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World”), and Academy Award®-winning special effects coordinator JOHN FRAZIER (“Spider-Man 2,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End,” “Pearl Harbor”).
Nicolas Cage has become one of the world’s most popular and acclaimed actors, an Academy Award® winner for his memorable role in “Leaving Las Vegas,” for which he also received Golden Globe® and Best Actor awards from numerous film critics’ associations.
NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS marks yet another collaboration between the actor and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, following such smash hits as “The Rock,” “Con Air,” “Gone in 60 Seconds” and, of course, “National Treasure.”
Jon Voight has created a gallery of memorable characters throughout his distinguished screen career, which has spanned nearly four decades. He is remembered for his Oscar®-winning turn in “Coming Home” as well as for his Academy Award®-nominated roles in “Midnight Cowboy,” “Runaway Train” and “Ali.” Just a few of Voight’s other films are “Catch-22,” “Deliverance,” “Conrack,” “The Rainmaker,” “Transformers” and the Jerry Bruckheimer Films productions of “Enemy of the State,” “Pearl Harbor,” “National Treasure” and “Glory Road.” Helen Mirren has won international recognition for performances spanning four decades.
Her role as Queen Elizabeth II in Miramax’s “The Queen” brought Mirren an Academy Award®, a Golden Globe®, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award and a Critics Choice Award. Her numerous other films have included “The Mosquito Coast,” “Cal” and “The Madness of King George.” On television, she’s won rave reviews and multiple awards for her performance as Jane Tennison in “Prime Suspect,” including a 2007 Emmy® Award.
Harvey Keitel has created some of the most strikingly original characters in contemporary cinema and was nominated for the Academy Award® for Best Actor in “The Piano” and Best Supporting Actor in “Bugsy.” His remarkable work has also been seen in such films as Martin Scorsese’s “Mean Streets,” “Taxi Driver,” “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” and “The Last Temptation of Christ,” “Thelma and Louise,” “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction,” among
many others.
Ed Harris is widely acclaimed as one of America’s finest actors, a four-time Academy Award® nominee whose films have included “A History of Violence” (which won him the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor), “The Hours,” “Pollock” (which he also directed), “A Beautiful Mind,” “The Truman Show,” “Apollo 13,” “The Right Stuff ” and Jerry Bruckheimer’s production of “The Rock.”
In 2004, Diane Kruger became an international sensation with her roles as Helen of Troy alongside Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom and Eric Bana in Wolfgang Petersen’s historical epic “Troy” and as beautiful and brainy Abigail Chase opposite Nicolas Cage in “National Treasure.” Kruger has also starred in such international productions as “Joyeux Noel (Merry Christmas),” “Frankie,” “Copying Beethoven,” “Les Brigades du Tigre,” “Goodbye Bafana” and “Spring Break in Bosnia.”
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