Sequel to National Treasure Announced

A sequel to the 2004 movie National Treasure starring Nicolas Cage has been announced.

The movie will be titled National Treasure: Book of Secrets and is scheduled to slip into theaters at the end of this year. The proposed release date for the movie has been set for December 21, 2007, according to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). The decision to produce a sequel to the hit 2004 movie, although there were no original plans to, is attributed solely to the success of the first movie.

"Everyone's back except anyone who's in jail or died," says John Turtletab, who has returned to direct the sequel. (Although we don't think we've seen the last of Ian Howe, the first movie's villain.) The original cast of characters includes Cage, Jon Voight, Diane Kruger (Abigail Chase), Harvey Keitel, and Justin Barta (Riley Poole). Additions to the cast include Helen Mirren (as Emily Appleton Gates), Ed Harris (as Jeb Wilkinson), and Bruce Greenwood (playing the part of the U.S. President). Jerry Bruckheimer's production company will also be back to produce the film. This will mark the fourth Cage movie Bruckheimer has produced (starting with Con Air in 1997).

The movie began filming on January 1, 2007 according to Jerry Bruckheimer. Scene locations have included: Mount Rushmore, in South Dakota; the Library of Congress, the Lincoln Memorial, White House, U.S. Capitol Building, Mt. Vernon, and the George Washington Masonic National Monument in the Washington, D.C. area; and the University of Maryland campus in College Park, Maryland.

This movie once again follows Benjamin Franklin Gates as he sets off to solve the mysteries lodged in the history of America. This time, he tackles the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, searching to find the 18 missing pages from John Wilkes Booth's diary, where light is sure to be shed on the assassination. The President of the United States, played by Bruce Greenwood, is kidnapped during the movie, but so far it still remains to be seen if Gates and his crew are to blame for this incident. Ed Harris will play the role of the villain in the movie, according to the Wikipedia page for the film.

Also mentioned on the Wikipedia page, Disney has registered two separate domain names for the sequel (http://www.nationaltreasure2thebookofsecrets.com/ and http://www.thebookofsecretsnationaltreasure2.com/), but as of the date of this article, content has not been uploaded to either site.

When filming concludes, more information should become available.