You’ve just won an Oscar, what are you going to do next? Get a big paycheck of course. It happens with most Oscar winners. They take a big cut in their fee to be in an artsy Oscar bait movie, then they win and immediately turn around and take some big blockbuster to make up for the money they lost winning awards. In this case it’s Helen Mirren doing it, and she’s following up The Queen with a role in National Treasure: The Book of Secrets.
Mirren has been cast to play the mother of Nicholas Cage’s treasure hunter character, Benjamin Franklin Gates. If you want to equate National Treasure to Indiana Jones, then Mirren is Sean Connery. Also joining the movie is Ed Harris, who Variety says will be playing the movie’s villain.
In the sequel, Gates takes on another piece of history when he investigates the truth behind the murder of Abraham Lincoln. The movie ends with a tremendous twist in which Gates discovers that honest Abe was not shot by John Wilkes Booth, but rather by Lee Harvey Oswald. What is it with three named guys and presidential assassination?
