Nineteen years after Book of Secrets, National Treasure 3 finally has something it has never had: the franchise’s director standing in front of a crowd saying it’s happening, with a script Disney has signed off on.
Jon Turteltaub, who directed both the 2004 original and the 2007 sequel, made the announcement Friday night during a live taping of the National Treasure Hunt podcast at the Independence Visitor Center in Philadelphia, the centerpiece of the city’s first National Treasure Weekend.
“I was thinking about mentioning this tonight, I’ll say it tonight,” Turteltaub said. “It’s happening. You’re the first people I have said this out loud to.”
According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, which was in the room, the crowd sat in stunned silence before it turned into applause.
“It’s Finally Real” — And Turteltaub Says Everyone’s Back
Turteltaub didn’t oversell it. He framed the news with the kind of caveat anyone who has followed this project’s two-decade limbo will appreciate:
“It’s finally real. Now, it’s ‘Hollywood real,’ meaning things can happen. Nic gets hit by a bus, there’s no National Treasure. If I get hit by a bus, there’s probably a National Treasure. Welcome to Hollywood, that’s Hollywood.”
The difference this time is the script. Turteltaub said they “finally have a script that I like,” and that Disney’s response was that it “sounds like a movie we can make.”
Per the Inquirer, he added that “to whatever extent we can, everyone’s back,” including Nicolas Cage.
The podcast’s own recap of the night puts it plainly: a script with the blessing of Turteltaub, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and Disney, and Cage returning as Ben Gates. The clip is up on the podcast’s Instagram, with the full interview set to drop next week.
The Missing “Yes” From Cage
Back in June, with both movies surging on Hulu and Cage doing press beside Diane Kruger for Spider-Noir, we pointed out the only thing this franchise was missing was Cage saying yes.
Bruckheimer had been promising progress for fifteen years. Cage, meanwhile, said in 2024 there was “no National Treasure 3” and that anyone looking for treasure shouldn’t look at Disney.
Confirmed vs. not: the Cage return is still coming from Turteltaub and the podcast, not from Cage or Disney. Reps for both had not responded to Variety’s request for comment.
Why It Took 19 Years: Turteltaub Blames The Political Climate
The most interesting part of the night wasn’t the announcement.
It was Turteltaub’s explanation for why a franchise that grossed over $800 million sat dormant for nearly two decades.
He told the crowd one reason was the country’s political climate. He recounted former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy calling him out of the blue to ask for a private screening of National Treasure for Congress, and said McCarthy, like others, was surprised Democrats had made the movie, because the assumption was that “Democrats can’t be patriots.”
Turteltaub said that thinking only got worse from there, and that the other side has its own caricature of Republicans.
He said the third film will deal with that polarization directly:
“We have to be very careful, but I don’t feel we are allowed to ignore it. I think we have to include that idea in the story somehow without making someone feel put off.”
That’s the one red flag in an otherwise clean announcement.
National Treasure worked because it was the rare Hollywood blockbuster both sides could claim, a movie where the Declaration of Independence is the MacGuffin and nobody gets lectured. Writing the culture war into the script is the fastest way to lose the audience that just pushed a 22-year-old movie back into Hulu’s top five.
Turteltaub’s “without making someone feel put off” suggests he knows it.
The Numbers Disney Couldn’t Ignore
The two films grossed $347.5 million and $459.2 million worldwide, over $800 million combined, and they remain Cage’s two highest-grossing live-action movies. Critics never cared for them (47% and 35% on Rotten Tomatoes), and it never mattered.
Then came June.
Disney added both movies to Hulu on June 1, and the original climbed into the top five on Hulu’s U.S. movies chart within days, alongside titles a fraction of its age.
At the same time, Cage and Kruger were back on screen together in Prime Video’s Spider-Noir.
A legacy sequel with that kind of built-in demand, two leads already working together, and a finished script is exactly the math a studio says yes to.
How We Got Here
- 2022: Cage says in a Reddit AMA that Disney’s priority was the TV show, so “probably not” on a third movie. National Treasure: Edge of History debuts on Disney+ in December.
- 2023: Disney+ cancels Edge of History after one season.
- March 2024: Cage tells Screen Rant, “There is no National Treasure 3.”
- May 2024: Turteltaub, on the same podcast, says the original cast could “100%” return but warns the clock is ticking.
- August 2024: Screenwriter Ted Elliott (Pirates of the Caribbean) says the Disney+ series is canon, Agent Sadusky is dead, and a first draft exists. He later teases the “weirdest” hunt yet.
- 2025: Cage softens, admitting “more chatter about it than normal.” Daniel RPK reports active development, and Bruckheimer says they’re getting closer.
- March 2026: Bruckheimer at the PGA Awards: the sequel is “coming along quite well.”
- June 2026: Both films crack Hulu’s top five; Cage and Kruger reunite on Spider-Noir.
- August 21, 2026: Turteltaub: “It’s happening.”
For the full development history, see our National Treasure 3 status breakdown. For the demand picture heading into this announcement, here’s our June look at the Cage-Kruger reunion.
