National Treasure 3 may actually be happening. The last entry, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, was released in Christmas 2007 and it looks like the franchise may now become a trilogy.
Director Jon Turteltaub and producer Jerry Bruckheimer have been optimistic with the script and now Turteltaub has announced that he aims to begin filming sometime over the next two years. While on the press junket for his latest film Last Vegas, Turteltaub revealed to Collider that “we want to do the movie, Disney wants to do the movie. We’re just having the damnedest time writing it. I’ll bet that within two years, we’ll be shooting that movie.”
“I’d say we’re about half-way there,” he continued. “It’s not only writing a great historical mystery, but we’ve gotta write something that has nothing to do with anything we’ve done before. The goal is to always have an original sequel, as silly as that sounds. We really want to make sure that the third one doesn’t just feel like a repeat of the first one, or one too many.”
The National Treasure movies were never the most memorable of films, with Nicolas Cage once again hamming it up. However, they were “put your brain at the door” entertaining and in truth were a hell of a lot of fun at times. Still, I can’t imagine anyone truly demanding a third National Treasure film, and this won’t exactly change the very nature of the film industry if it does indeed become a reality.
Originally published October 22, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
