In the aftermath of a deadly attack on American forces in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, diplomats are slow to act, but meanwhile, FBI special agent Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx) assembles a secret team of U.S. counter-terrorism investigators to enter the city and find the criminal behind what has quickly become an international incident.
Academy Award® winner Jamie
Foxx leads an all-star ensemble
in a timely that
tracks a powder-keg criminal investigation shared by two cultures
chasing a deadly enemy ready to strike again in The Kingdom.
When a terrorist bomb detonates inside a Western housing compound
in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia,
an international incident is ignited. While diplomats slowly debate
equations of territorialism, FBI Special Agent Ronald Fleury (Foxx)
quickly assembles an elite team (Oscar winner Chris Cooper and Golden
Globe winners Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman) and negotiates a
secret five-day trip into Saudi Arabia to locate the madman behind
the bombing.
Upon landing in the desert kingdom, however, Fleury and his team
discover Saudi
authorities suspicious and unwelcoming of American interlopers into
what they consider a local matter. Hamstrung by protocol -- and with
the clock ticking on their five days -- the FBI agents find their
expertise worthless without the trust of their Saudi counterparts,
who want to locate the terrorist in their homeland on their own terms.
Fleury"s crew finds a like-minded partner in Saudi Colonel Al-Ghazi
(Ashraf Barhoum), who helps them navigate royal politics and unlock
the secrets of the crime
scene and the workings of an extremist cell bent on further destruction.
With these unlikely allies sharing a propulsive commitment to crack
the case, the team is led to the killer"s front door in a blistering
do-or-die confrontation. Now in a fight for their own lives, strangers
united by one mission won"t stop until justice is found in The Kingdom.
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
Welcome to The Kingdom:
An Action-Thriller is Built
Peter Berg conceived of the idea for The Kingdom a decade ago, after
watching
news coverage of the infamous June 25, 1996, Khobar Towers terrorist
attack in Khobar,
Saudi Arabia. Saudi Hezbollah exploded a fuel truck that slaughtered
19 Americans, a
Saudi national and wounded 372 people of many nationalities in one
of the most brutal
anti-American attacks ever staged in that region.
Berg recalls of the attack that affected U.S. relations with its
Saudi allies: “It was
an act of terrorism that targeted Americans, and was felt painfully
by Saudis as well. It
led to the FBI trying to work for the first time with Saudi law enforcement,
which proved
to be a complicated and tricky investigative effort. I thought it
would be a fascinating
idea for a film, to watch how the American and Arab cultures—both
targets of religious
violence and sharing a common interest in battling religious extremism—navigate
differences, suspicions and politics to try and work together.”
Over the next few years, the idea would gestate as Berg developed
a dual career
as actor and filmmaker, helming notable box-office hits from The
Rundown to Friday
Night Lights. The concept would also gel in the scores of conversations
he and a close
Saudi friend had about the political realities and complexities of
Arab-American
relations. And then came September 11, 2001.
“After 9/11, there was so much anti-Saudi sentiment in the
States, because so
many of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia; Osama was Saudi. But,
it wasn’t
reflected in my relationships with Saudis I knew.” The director
believed that there was
no better time to make a film that “looks at the joint Arab
and American fight against
violent extremism.”
He wanted to create an action-thriller that presented two worlds
working together,
“through the friendship that develops between two men from
very different cultures—an
FBI agent and a Saudi colonel.” And he would find that material
during Summer 2003.
In June 2003, Berg approached Mann in his office next door and asked
if he’d
produce the project through his Forward Pass production company.
Mann was producing
The Aviator, directed by Martin Scorsese, and liked the idea of working
with strong
directors with authoritative visions. The screenwriter Berg had in
mind was a 30-yearold
unknown named Matthew Michael Carnahan, who had written a scorching
drama
titled Soldier Field—which told the story of a Chicago police
officer pitted against the
Mafia and the Russian mob. Mann had read Carnahan’s Soldier
Field.
Berg responded to the strategic ways in which Carnahan crafted action,
and knew
he was the man for the job. “He’s a politically savvy
guy, but he also writes kick-ass
action,” the director says. “We didn’t want to
make a film that fundamentally existed as
a political exposé. We wanted a film that was entertaining
and muscular with strong
action, yet was fair in capturing the politics of the times.” Mann
and Berg took the story
to Universal Pictures.
Mann, long known for his catalogue of explosive thrillers and smart
dramas, was
curious to explore a “procedural homicide investigation done
in the most hostile of
circumstances.” He thought there would be great dramatic tension
in the knowledge that,
for ops-leader Ronald Fleury, “they don’t want you there;
your government doesn’t want
you to be there. And all of that forces a collision, and eventually,
a fraternal loyalty
between two law enforcement officials.”
The celebrated filmmaker believed there was no better way to examine
political,
global and regional issues than by examining them through the experience
of a homicide
detective. He offers, “When violence happens, it is truly traumatic
on the personal level.
That’s why we wanted to ground this whole story inside the
day-to-day experience of two
exceptionally skilled police types who are also average guys with
concerns for their
families and the state of safety in their countries.”
Producer Scott Stuber, who previously worked with director Berg on
both The
Rundown and Friday Night Lights as Universal Pictures’ vice
chairman of worldwide
production, remembers when the idea for the project came across his
desk. “Pete,
Michael and I had dinner together,” he recalls. “They
pitched the story to me, and I
thought it was a great idea. We were all big fans of Carnahan’s
script for Soldier Field,
and he wanted to write this…so it was an easy pitch for me
to buy for the studio.”
During the project’s development, Stuber announced his departure
from the
executive suites of Universal to form, along with his co-chair at
the studio and one of the
film’s executive producers, Mary Parent, the production company
Stuber/Parent. Berg
and Mann contacted Stuber, asking him to stay on and help shepherd
the project to the
screen. The Kingdom was one of the projects that Stuber had passionately
advocated at
Universal, and he was committed to helping fulfill the project’s
destiny by working on it
as a producer.
Stuber responded to the developing story of taking “four investigators
and putting
them on Mars—in a place that’s the most difficult to
execute their job.” He firmly
believed The Kingdom could “play both as an intellectual drama
and as an action
movie—it has action and thrills, but it also deals with real-world
problems.”
Mann introduced the team to Richard Klein, managing director for
the Middle
East and Arabian Gulf at Kissinger McLarty Associates, and Time magazine’s
Elaine
Shannon. And on multiple research trips to Washington, D.C., Carnahan
met with
several of the FBI’s top explosives experts and hostage rescue
team members to get
specifics of their experiences in the Middle East. He spoke with
agents who had seen the
after effects of the Khobar bombings, worked in Yemen after the U.S.S.
Cole was
attacked and slogged through East Africa after American embassies
were bombed.
Carnahan leveraged their encyclopedic knowledge and perceptions of
working
with foreign nationals into making the script as true to life as
possible. He was
particularly intrigued by the stories of hostage rescue team members
accompanying the
FBI and protecting investigators—and the different standards
of justice, criminal
procedure and criminal science they found in their host countries.
Tragically, in May
2003, three western housing complexes in Saudi Arabia were attacked
in the same night.
That was the final seed that would inform the filmed script.
Berg was able to travel to Saudi Arabia to do additional research
on behalf of the
film. In one scouting session, he sat on a panel with Saudi women
and men from
different strata of society. “This is a story set in a world
that most of us know nothing
about, but Pete had a real vision for the type of movie he wanted
to make,” recalls Stuber.
The director emphasizes he wasn’t “looking to make a
jingoistic all-American
film about a group of Americans that come and kick ass in an Arab
culture. We’re
politically neutral in the film. If we go after anyone, it’s
violent extremism. This movie
is about Americans and Arabs working together in a very decent and
human way.”
Production green lit and a script finished, the producers and Berg
would look to
develop an elite team out of four American and two Arab actors who
were willing to
undergo hard-core training in the most brutal of heat.
