WASHINGTON
What happens after dark in the halls of a museum? A few lucky kids will get to find out in the months ahead, thanks to some big promotions and travel deals drawing on the buzz of Hollywood's new museum flick, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.
The world's largest museum complex, the Smithsonian Institution, is in the spotlight and hoping that the movie -- starring Ben Stiller, Robin Williams and Amy Adams -- will draw millions of young new visitors to see the real airplanes and artifacts housed in Washington that are featured in the movie. Kid-friendly product promotions already are offering chances to win free trips for a sleepover at the real Smithsonian.
Much of the movie is set at the National Air and Space Museum, though it also features artworks and treasures from other sites on the National Mall. It's set for release in theaters Friday.
"Hopefully they can make history come to life," said aeronautics curator Robert van der Linden, who reviewed the script and made sure that film crews didn't break anything while they shot scenes at the museum last year.
The show is "a complete fantasy," he said, noting that the Wright brothers come alive, with their famous flyer zooming out of the museum. The real plane barely got off the ground. "It reminds people of what's here," he said.
In the sequel to the 2006 film Night at the Museum,which was set at New York's American Museum of Natural History, Stiller's character, security guard Larry Daley, comes to Washington to find his museum friends who are stone-cold exhibits by day but spring to life when the sun goes down. They had been shipped from New York to a mythical vault under the National Mall.
The film trailer gives a few hints about the characters he encounters. There are roles for Darth Vader, Oscar the Grouch and Abraham Lincoln.
It's even more magical than the first movie, said Claire Brown, a spokeswoman for the Air and Space museum, who has seen the new film.
"Paintings come to life. Photographs come to life. Statues come to life," she said. "Nothing's off limits."
The Smithsonian is capitalizing on this moment -- its first time to be so prominently featured in theaters across the country.
Officials from the museum and the city's tourism bureau teamed up with the movie studio to strike deals with McDonald's, Kraft, Hershey's and Post cereals. They want to make it hard for anyone to miss this movie, and offer the chance to visit the real museums.
Sweepstakes offers on millions of boxes of macaroni and cheese, candies and cereals will give away free trips for kids to have a sleepover with their families at the real Smithsonian. Another publicity campaign will help visitors find the real artifacts that they see in the movie.
"It's reaching a demographic that is so important to our future," Brown said. "We want kids to know they can have fun in museums."
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