‘National Treasure 3’ Gets Disappointing Update From Nicolas Cage

Don’t expect Nicolas Cage to be hunting for treasure anytime soon. In a new interview with Screen Rant, the actor gave a blunt response when asked about the possibility of National Treasure 3, the long-rumored and hoped-for third installment in the action-adventure heist film series, confirming that a third movie currently isn’t in the works.

“Here we go! See, you’re the one that brings these things up and they go out and they eclipse everything else,” Cage said. “No, there is no National Treasure 3. If you want to find treasure, don’t look at Disney, okay? It’s not there.”

The National Treasure franchise kicked off in 2004 and largely centers around Cage’s Benjamin Franklin Gates, a historian/amateur treasure hunter who goes on a quest to steal the Declaration of Independence. A follow-up film released in 2007, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, found Benjamin tasked with decoding the journal of John Wilkes Booth to clear his ancestor’s name in the Lincoln assassination. The first movie grossed over $347 million worldwide, with the second film reaching over $459 million.

Rumors of a third film eventually hitting the big screen have been around since at least 2008, and in January 2020, it was announced that screenwriter Chris Bremner, best known for writing 2020’s Bad Boys for Life, was attached to write the screenplay. However, little news has surfaced since other than Cage in 2021 telling Variety in 2021, “I don’t know if I’d want to go back. I don’t know if I’d want to go and make another Disney movie. It would be terrifying. It’s a whole different climate. There’s a lot of fear there.” Walt Disney Pictures produced the first two National Treasure films, and the franchise still lies with Disney.

Cage’s most recent comments confirming that a third movie is not on the horizon comes a little less than a year after National Treasure fans got another disappointing update. In April 2023, Disney+’s National Treasure series was canceled after just a single season. The show starred Lisette Olivera as Jess, a DREAMer looking for answers about her family. She goes off on an adventure to discover the truth about the past while also saving a lost Pan-American treasure. It also starred Antonio Cipriano, Jordan Rodriguez, Jake Austin Walker, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Lyndon Smith.