They didn’t rush back for ‘Treasure’

“National Treasure: Book of Secrets” includes a lost city of gold -- but we’re not at liberty to tell you where. The diaries of John Wilkes Booth figure prominently in the plot, yet we’re sworn not to say how. And the sequel stars no fewer than three Oscar winners -- Nicolas Cage, Helen Mirren and Jon Voight -- which might be the biggest mystery of all.

But hit films -- especially movies that come out of nowhere and take moviegoers by storm -- have a special power all their own, and “National Treasure” is one such production. While the 2004 original opened well enough, it became one of those movies that wouldn’t go away, ultimately grossing just under $175 million. That’s more than the much-anticipated film “The Polar Express,” released the same year.

Whereas the first movie centered on a secret hidden on the back of the Declaration of Independence, the new film, due Dec. 21, revolves around Abraham Lincoln and Mt. Rushmore. “You want to give the audience the things they loved in the first movie,” says director Jon Turteltaub who, like Cage, is making his first sequel with the film, “but also give them something new without going in such a new direction they feel cheated.”

Despite the first film’s strong performance, Disney and producer Jerry Bruckheimer struggled to get a worthy screenplay assembled.

“We still haven’t finished with the script,” Bruckheimer said on the “Book of Secrets” set last spring, as Cage, Diane Kruger and Justin Bartha entered an enormous underground chamber with raging waterfalls.

“The studio says, ‘We’re going to do it,’ ” Bruckheimer said. “But you can’t do any of it until all the actors and the director say, ‘We like the screenplay.’ ”

-- John Horn