TAMPA, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Action, suspense, and the opportunity to win hundreds of thousands of dollars in authentic shipwreck treasure from Odyssey Marine Exploration, or even a brand new Mercedes-Benz, are attracting users everywhere to play “The World’s Biggest Treasure Hunt”. The online experience at www.disney.com/NationalTreasure is both a multi-week treasure hunt game and the official website for Walt Disney Pictures’ and Jerry Bruckheimer Films’ NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS, in theatres everywhere December 21. Every two weeks, “The World’s Biggest Treasure Hunt” opens a new location featuring two new games. In the latest addition to the site, visitors can test their reflexes and talents as ocean explorers by piloting Odyssey’s Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) ZEUS through the SS Republic shipwreck site to search for treasure, or by testing their memory in sonar-themed puzzles. Players of these games are eligible to win authentic shipwreck treasure from the Civil War era SS Republic shipwreck discovered by Odyssey. NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS reaches back into the Civil War era, as the film’s hero Ben Gates (Nicolas Cage) sets out on an action-packed global quest to unravel the mystery of 18 missing pages from the diary of John Wilkes Booth that implicate Gates’ great-great grandfather as a key conspirator in President Lincoln’s assassination. “The World’s Biggest Treasure Hunt” website allows visitors to interact with film content and play a variety of online games themed around the movie’s globe-trotting adventures. "We're thrilled to have the opportunity to partner with Walt Disney Studios on this unprecedented promotion," stated Greg Stemm, Odyssey Co-Founder. "There are some amazing parallels between the shipwreck treasure of the SS Republic and the plot of NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS. The film begins as the Civil War is ending, about the same time that the SS Republic was on her way from New York to New Orleans carrying a fortune in coins and cargo to help rebuild the war-ravaged South. Amazingly, rare coins minted by the Confederacy in 1861 were among the treasures carefully recovered from the shipwreck in the most extensive deep ocean archaeological excavation ever accomplished." Visitors who play at least one game from each location in “The World’s Biggest Treasure Hunt” over the ten week promotion period will be eligible to win the grand prize, an all-new 2008 Mercedes-Benz C-class car, the vehicle featured in the film, filled with real treasures. Entertainment Tonight, the #1 syndicated entertainment newsmagazine show in the world, plans to announce the winners on the show leading up to the film’s opening day on December 21.
