In the action-comedy KNIGHT AND DAY, Tom Cruise is a covert agent and Cameron Diaz is a woman caught between him and those he claims set him up. As their globetrotting adventure erupts into a maze of double-crosses, close escapes, false identities, and head-spinning romantic snafus, they come to realize that all they can count on is each other.
Director James Mangold reunites with his behind-the-scenes team from Walk the Line and 3:10 To Yuma -- director of photography Phedon Papamichael, ASC, editor Michael McCusker, A.C.E., costume designer Arianne Phillips, and production designer Andrew Menzies (the latter collaborating with Mangold only on 3:10 to Yuma) - who bring to life Knight and Day's sleek action, humor and edgy suspense in an array of spectacular locations. The music is by John Powell, whose many contemporary thrillers include The Bourne trilogy, Mr. and Mrs. Smith and The Italian Job.

BEGINNINGS
At breakneck speed, secret agent Roy Miller (Tom Cruise) sends the ordinary-seeming June Havens' (Cameron Diaz) life on a screeching detour . . . and vice versa. June boarded a plane in Wichita, Kansas and began chatting up her charming, mysterious seatmate - Roy. Soon after, everything changed. Suddenly, the plane was hurtling into a cornfield without any living crew or passengers.
Without even time to catch her breath, June finds herself being pursued around the globe -- dodging bullets in Boston, leaping rooftops in Austria, and running from bulls in Seville - all in the company of a potentially duplicitous, possibly unstable yet decidedly alluring secret agent at the center of a life-or-death adventure that will push these two people from opposite worlds to do the one thing they've long avoided: trust. Now, nothing will be the same again for them, as this exceptional secret operative finds himself undone by ordinary love and this everyday woman finds herself capable of the most extraordinary things she could imagine.
"Knight and Day has everything I love in movies," says Tom Cruise. "It's a perfect mix of action, comedy and fresh, identifiable characters with a love story that feels very organic. What interested me so much about the story of Roy and June is that everything that happens to them happens through the prism of action. The challenge and joy for Cameron and me was finding ways to reveal our characters in the middle of these manic moments of danger -- showing how Roy and June start to bring out the best in each other, which is the ultimate romantic idea."
Cameron Diaz, who was already attached to the project when Cruise came aboard, appreciated the characters' interplay, their romance - and the chance to take the journey with her leading man. "I was drawn to Knight and Day not only for its high-level action, but because I saw it as an impassioned love story between two people who find each other from opposite worlds," Diaz says. "Roy and June have that thing where they each bring out something interesting and unexpected in the other, and I thought that would be so much fun to explore on this thrilling ride with Tom."
Director James Mangold has a history of taking creative, edgy approaches to classic genres - he most recently helmed the Oscar-winning biopic of Johnny Cash, Walk the Line; and brought wit and speed to the Western in the critically acclaimed 3:10 To Yuma. Now he makes another departure, mixing global espionage action with witty romance, and wrapping an intricate web of high-speed chases, battles and escapes inside a love story full of glamour and fun.
Unlike most action films of this scope, Knight and Day did not begin as a comic book, TV series or franchise property -- but as a spec script by Patrick O'Neill. For Mangold, it was a chance to make something classic new again. "We saw Knight and Day as an update of those wonderful, Hollywood cinematic confections -- a movie full of travel, glamour, humor, love and adventure - but with modern characters and dynamic, intense action," he says. "One of the things important to me, as a director who has done both dramatic and comedic films, was not to let Knight and Day become a James Bond movie. We wanted to do something more fanciful, more like Charade or North by Northwest; a modern action picture with a light heart. We wanted to take audiences on a fun journey around the world, a journey filled with comedy, yet with characters who feel completely real and actors who would commit to that."
He continues: "To do all that, you need the right people. With Tom and Cameron, I knew it could happen. One of the things I've really missed about Tom's movies in the last several years, and what I really wanted to see again in Knight and Day, was Tom in a role that is both human and funny. I was really excited by the opportunity to take that step with him playing Roy Miller, a character who is suddenly second-guessing everything that he wants in life. And then into Roy's world walks Cameron Diaz, as June Havens, who puts him in a position to do things and feel things he's never done or felt before. A major interest for me was the humor of mixing together their romantic squabbles and confusion with high-scale action."
Another person key to the project was Mangold's long-time filmmaking partner and behind-the-scenes marriage partner, producer Cathy Konrad, with whom he has developed a tight-knit creative shorthand that it verges on telepathy. Konrad was drawn to Knight and Day by the story's originality. "It's hard to find fresh material that isn't superhero based or something like that," she observes. "What spoke to us is that Knight and Day is about two great characters, even more so than the action. It reflects something that I think is found in all of our work: the idea that behind every good story there are always great people."
Mangold relished the challenge of bending a beloved genre. "We were very aware of the legacy and iconography of spy movies - the Bond pictures, the Bourne pictures, the Mission: Impossible pictures - and we were always looking at how we could upend that and find new ways to approach it," he explains. "Knight and Day is not a send-up. We set out to create a world that feels completely real to the audience, yet is also deeply comic."
Mangold upped the clash of high-end spycraft with comedy and romance, while taking the characters into slippery territory, which is just where he likes to dwell. He says: "One of the fun questions the movie asks is: even if you are a spy capable of bringing down a plane or saving the world . . . can you handle a relationship? You have these two wonderfully opposite characters - a woman who has always had a fantasy of going somewhere but has never let go enough to do it and a man who has been absolutely everywhere, but has never let himself know love. It's a collision of opposite desires from the moment they meet."

TOM AND CAMERON
Tom Cruise has come to define the suave, bold, quick-witted action hero in contemporary movies - in roles ranging from Top Gun to the hugely popular Mission: Impossible series - while at the same time earning three Academy Award nominations for emotionally complex dramatic roles in Magnolia, Jerry Maguire and Born on the Fourth of July. He was thrilled to now have a chance to playfully upend just the kind of debonair, unflappable hero audiences expect him to evoke. From the minute he came onto the project, his motto was "Make it fun and make it cool."
Key to crafting that romantic tension was Cruise's long-awaited reunion with Cameron Diaz, with whom he previously starred in the suspense-fantasy Vanilla Sky. "As soon as we took on these roles, I could not wait to see what Cameron was going to do with her character. I always wanted to make this kind of movie with Cameron," he says. "I was really excited about it because I enjoy her work in action movies. She's talented, funny, athletic and a great actress, and this was such a winning character, I knew she'd give a winning performance."  Read more

THE SUPPORTING CAST
Tom Cruise's Roy is a man with a lot of people after him. From U.S. agents to foreign spies, he is an extremely wanted man - all of which provided an opportunity for Knight and Day's filmmakers to cast a stellar group of actors in the film's additional starring and supporting roles. Chief among those in pursuit of Roy is Fitzgerald, the agency boss who tries to convince June that Roy is a spy-gone-bad. To play Fitzgerald, Mangold chose one of today's most versatile actors: Peter Sarsgaard, fresh off critical acclaim for his portrait of a charming con man in An Education. Read more

SHOOTING THE FILM
From the minute June and Roy encounter each other in Kansas, the pace of Knight and Day begins to accelerate, until they are on a ceaseless, death-defying journey around the world, making stops in Boston, New York, the Alps, Austria, Spain and the tropical Caribbean. For the filmmakers, this meant an ambitious production on every level. Shooting in five different countries while forging a wide variety of original stunts and intricately choreographed set pieces, the production of Knight and Day, much like its characters, had to hit the ground running.  Read more

ACTION! THE STUNTS AND SPECIAL EFFECTS
From its opening moments, Knight and Day features a continuous flow of imaginative action sequences that not only ratchet up the suspense but become an entrée into Roy and June's hearts and minds. From a motorcycle doing wheelies through a running herd of Spanish bulls to a funny-yet-furious Smart Car chase through downtown Seville, nearly every frame of the film required extensive stunt choreography and special effects planning.Read more

James Mangold  
With seven feature films to date, including the award-winning Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma, Heavy and Girl, Interrupted, JAMES MANGOLD (Director/Co-Written by) is a director known for making sophisticated ensemble films in a wide range of genres while keeping constant the powerful themes, original characterizations, sterling performances and striking imagery that have come to define and unify his work. The son of renowned painters Robert Mangold and Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Mangold was raised in New York's Hudson Valley. He graduated in film and acting from California Institute of the Arts, where he studied with Alexander Mackendrick (Sweet Smell of Success, The Ladykillers).
He broke into the film business at the age of 21 as the recipient of a prestigious writer/director deal with Disney. After a few years in Hollywood he decided to go to Columbia University's film school, where be began writing the film Heavy while studying under Oscar winning director Milos Forman. Heavy went on to win the Director's Prize at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival and was selected to represent the United States at Director's Fortnight in the Cannes Film Festival. Following the critical success of Heavy, Mangold began production on his second film, Cop Land, an urban Western set in modern-day New Jersey starring Sylvester Stallone, Harvey Keitel, Robert DeNiro, Ray Liotta and Janeane Garafalo. The film was accepted into the main competition of the Cannes Film Festival and premiered in the U.S. to strong reviews. It was on this film that began his enduring creative partnership with producer Cathy Konrad (Kids, Beautiful Girls, Citizen Ruth, Scream and all of Mangold's subsequent films).
Mangold continued his tradition of documenting the inner struggles of conflicted individuals by adapting Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted for the screen. The film went on to win a Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe and Oscar for Angelina Jolie's performance as Lisa, the charming sociopath who befriends the protagonist, played by Winona Ryder. Mangold then went on to make the romantic comedy Kate & Leopold, starring Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman, and the mind-bending thriller Identity, starring John Cusack and Ray Liotta.
Walk the Line, an enormous success with critics and audiences alike, starred Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon as the legendary music couple Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. Both actors performed their own vocals for the movie, and took home Golden Globes for their performances and the film also won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy. The film received five Academy Award nominations, and Witherspoon won for Best Performance by an Actress. A project long in the works (Mangold and Konrad began work on it a decade ago), it was developed with the assistance and collaboration of John and June Carter Cash until their deaths in 2003.
Mangold recently directed 3:10 to Yuma, starring Russell and Christian Bale; the gritty Western was warmly greeted by the press and audiences alike, and received award nomination from an impressive array of critics groups--including two Oscar nominations--with the cast receiving a nod from SAG for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.
Mangold also directed the pilot episode of the ABC romantic comedy/drama Men in Trees, starring Anne Heche, which debuted in fall 2006 and ran for two successful seasons on ABC. The series was produced by Mangold and Cathy Konrad's production company, Tree/Line Films.

Parick O' Neill
After moving to Los Angeles in 1996, PATRICK O'NEILL (Co-Written by; Story by) spent many years working in television, primarily in a partnership with his old friends Steve Pink and D.V. de Vincentis, with whom he co-created and executive-produced Dead Last for the former WB. He has also created pilots for HBO, ABC, NBC and FOX, in addition to the former WB.
Patrick wrote Knight and Day on spec. The script was purchased by Joe Roth for Revolution Studios in October of 2005, shortly before that studio closed. Then, with Joe Roth acting as the producer, the project was taken to Sony, and then to Twentieth Century Fox. Patrick recently completed writing the action comedy Arch Enemies (based on the Dark Horse comic series) for Dark Horse and Buckaroo Entertainment.
Prior to moving to Los Angeles, Patrick lived in Chicago, where he was an active member of the Chicago theater community, and also directed several short films. He has also appeared as an actor in several feature films. He studied theater and film at Columbia College in Chicago.

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