‘National Treasure 3’ Is Finally ‘Hollywood Real’ — Director Confirms, Everyone’s Coming Back

After more than two decades of teases, false starts and “it’s getting closer” quotes, the National Treasure franchise has finally given fans the confirmation they’ve been waiting for. Franchise director Jon Turteltaub says a third film is happening — and he dropped the news in charmingly candid fashion, admitting he had never spoken about it publicly until this weekend.

“I have not said anything before this, but you deserve to have the scoop,” Turteltaub said during a live taping of the “National Treasure Hunt” podcast, per The Philadelphia Inquirer. “It’s happening. I have not said anything before this, but you deserve to have the scoop. It’s finally real.”

For the uninitiated, this is a big deal. The first National Treasure hit theaters in 2004 and essentially invented a genre: a genuinely fun adventure franchise built on history, cryptograms and a very charming Nicolas Cage. The sequel arrived three years later. And then… nothing. For almost two decades, fans have been waiting for a third adventure, watching various false starts and casting rumors come and go. So when the director of the franchise says “it’s finally real,” that lands with real weight.

What Turteltaub Said

Turteltaub didn’t just confirm the project exists — he went out of his way to set expectations honestly. “Now, it’s ‘Hollywood real,’ meaning things could happen. Nic gets hit by a bus, there’s no ‘National Treasure 3.’ If I get hit by a bus, there’s probably a ‘National Treasure 3.’ Welcome to Hollywood.”

It’s a classic Hollywood hedge, and an honest one. Development in this town is famously fragile — projects can be announced and vanish within six months. But the fact that Turteltaub is publicly committing to the project, telling an audience they’re the “first people I have said this out loud to,” signals real momentum. He added that a script is already in the works, and, crucially, promised the core team is returning: “to whatever extent we can, everyone’s back.”

Reps for Disney and Nicolas Cage did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but the pieces are clearly moving.

A Franchise Two Decades in the Making

To understand why this confirmation matters, you have to remember how popular the franchise is. The 2004 original — starring Cage and Diane Kruger as historians who stumble onto a conspiracy rooted in the Declaration of Independence — grossed $347 million worldwide. The team, including the missing Nicholas Cage and his cohort of treasure-hunting pals, became a beloved ensemble. Justin Bartha, Sean Bean, Jon Voight and Harvey Keitel rounded out the cast, and audiences fell in love with the blend of historical detective work and blockbuster adventure.

The sequel, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, was even bigger, exploding to $459 million worldwide. Yet despite that box office power, a third film never materialized over the years. Disney instead pivoted to television, launching a National Treasure: Edge of History series on Disney+ in 2022 titled “Edge of History” — a younger-skewing spinoff that, to be honest, didn’t capture the magic of the movies and was canceled after a single season. That failure arguably underscored just how much the original formula — and the original cast — mattered to the franchise’s appeal.

Why It Matters Now

The timing here is worth noting. In an era when studios are leaning hard into nostalgia and mining their libraries for sequels and reboots, “National Treasure” always felt like one of the most obvious candidates — a franchise with proven box office muscle, a beloved cast and a premise that remains endlessly adaptable. The confirmation comes as Disney has been leaning into bringing back iconic movie franchises, betting on familiar brands that audiences already love. A “National Treasure 3” with Cage and the core crew onboard would be a return to the well that fans have been asking for since 2007.

There’s also the question of whether the franchise can recapture its particular charm. The original films worked because they treated historical minutiae as genuinely thrilling — conspiracy theories, secret societies and treasure maps hidden in founding documents. That earnest, slightly goofy tone is hard to replicate, especially with a cameo-packed, Marvel-style approach. The good news is that a franchise built on puzzles and adventure doesn’t age the same way a visual-effects-heavy blockbuster does; the formula is timeless. The question is whether the new film can find the same lightning in a bottle.

Where the Fans Stand

If the reaction on social media is anything to go by, this announcement hit exactly the right note. Generations of viewers grew up on these movies, and the “National Treasure” fanbase has proven remarkably durable across the gap. Fan art, theory threads about what secret the third movie will unlock, and endless debates about which historical mystery deserves the big-screen treatment have kept the franchise alive online even while production stalled. The confirmation gives that community a reason to roar again — and it gives casual viewers a shared cultural moment to enjoy.

There’s also a genuine curiosity about how the creative team will update the formula. The first two movies leaned on a very specific flavor of American history — the Founding Fathers, the Freemasons, hidden messages in national monuments. A third outing in the current era has more material to work with than ever, from the lingering mysteries of old institutions to entirely new kinds of secrets. Whether the filmmakers lean into the original’s earnest tone or modernize it for younger audiences will be one of the most interesting creative questions of the production.

What to Watch For

Script development, casting confirmations and a production timeline are the obvious next steps. Turteltaub’s promise that “everyone’s back” raises the question of whether Cage, Kruger, Bartha and the rest of the ensemble will all return. Cage is having something of a late-career renaissance — from the gonzo action of classics like Ghost Rider and Con Air to the meta-comedy energy of his more recent work — and audiences remain deeply fond of him in adventure mode.

For longtime fans, this is the payoff to a very long wait. And if you’ve never seen the originals, now is genuinely the perfect time to catch up before the third installment arrives. Few franchises pull off the “smart action movie” trick quite like this one — historical fact, rapid-fire puzzles, and Nicolas Cage at his most delightfully earnest. It’s a formula that made two movies into massive hits and built a devoted fanbase. The only question now is how the third chapter finally gets the story moving.

Sources: Variety; Deadline; TheWrap; Entertainment Weekly; The Philadelphia Inquirer