Ben says, "I believe I can help with that, Sir," adding that the contents are "life-altering."Ī mysterious book that contains a "life-altering" secret that requires the very particular skill set of a treasure hunter? Surely there had to be a sequel! Unfortunately, Disney never made National Treasure 3. At the end of the movie, the president asks Ben what he thought of page 47 of the Presidents' Book of Secrets that is kept in the Library of Congress. Ben even goes so far as to tell the president (Bruce Greenwood) that Wilkinson deserves equal credit.įans assumed that this success meant there would be a National Treasure 3 - and Book of Secrets seemed to confirm this with its open-ended conclusion. But Ben also seeks justice for Wilkinson, who switched from threatening to murder Ben to sacrificing himself to save Ben and his family and friends during the discovery of the city. And naturally, Ben sets out to prove that his ancestor was too busy hunting for treasure to be wrapped up in a political assassination, by finding said treasure.īy the end of National Treasure 2, Ben and his father are able to point to the city of gold to clear their ancestor's name. Wilkinson accuses Thomas Gates of orchestrating President Lincoln's assassination. But at the start of the sequel, the family name is besmirched again, this time by Mitch Wilkinson (Ed Harris), the great-great-grandson of one of the disgruntled Confederates. IT LEFT SOME PEOPLE WONDERING IF THERE REALLY IS A SECRET MAP.At the end of National Treasure, Ben's joint discovery of the treasure of the Knights Templar transformed the Gates family from gold-hunting crackpots to pioneering historians, in the minds of those who care about such things. There’s no given reason for why those times were picked by the Treasury Department, leaving conspiracy theorists plenty to chew on. Bills in circulation at that time really did have an illustration that pointed to that exact hour and minute, although it was changed to 10:30 for the 2009 redesign. One of Cage’s cryptic clues in the film is reading a time of 2:22 on the clock depicted on the image of Independence Hall on the $100 bill. THAT $100 BILL REALLY DID HAVE A PRECISE TIME ON THE CLOCK.
The production used it for a scene requiring Cage to run on the Hall's roof, a stunt that was not likely to have been approved by caretakers of the real thing. It can be tricky to secure permission to film on government property, which is why producers of National Treasure probably considered themselves fortunate when they discovered that Walter Knott of Knott’s Berry Farm fame had built a perfect replica of Independence Hall on his land in Buena Park, California back in the 1960s. THE CREW USED A BRICK-FOR-BRICK REPLICA OF INDEPENDENCE HALL. Of the 55 men who signed the document, nine or more belonged to the society. While it’s not likely the Declaration of Independence has a secret treasure map written on it, Franklin and other Founding Fathers were actually Freemasons. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN REALLY WAS A FREEMASON.įact and fiction blur considerably in National Treasure, which uses history as a jumping-off point for some major jumps in logic.
Turteltaub, who spent three years in development before finally starting production, told Variety that “getting Cage was worth. Filming finally began in summer 2003 when Marianne and Cormac Wibberley got the script finalized. Nine writers were hired between 19 in an attempt to streamline the story, which sees code-breaker Benjamin Franklin Gates (Cage) pursuing the stash of riches squirreled away by Benjamin Franklin and his Freemason cohorts. Originally planned for a summer 2000 release, National Treasure-based on a concept by Disney marketing head Oren Aviv and DreamWorks television executive Charles Segars-had a Byzantine plot that kept it in a prolonged pre-production period.
NATIONAL TREASURE SECRETS CRACK
THE SCRIPT NEEDED NINE WRITERS TO CRACK THE CODE. Check out some facts about the movie’s development, its approach to historical accuracy, and why we haven't seen a third film. Stumble upon it on a streaming service or a cable channel and the fable about historian-slash-codebreaker Benjamin Franklin Gates ( Nicolas Cage) excavating the truth about a reputed treasure map on the back of the Declaration of Independence will suck you in.
Released in 2004 to mixed critical reviews but a positive audience response, director Jon Turteltaub’s National Treasure has grown into a perfect rainy-day film.
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