Nicolas Cage Has Some Bad News On National Treasure 3

Oscar-winner Nicolas Cage starred in two National Treasure movies for Disney that made huge amounts of money and helped to catapult the actor to a new level of mainstream fame. But the most recent entry in the series is 2007’s National Treasure: Book of Secrets. Fans have been eagerly awaiting new installment ever since, but according to Cage, it’s not going to happen.

“No, there is no National Treasure 3. If you want to find treasure, don’t look at Disney, okay? It’s not there,” he told ScreenRant.

The National Treasure series did continue, in a way, through the Disney+ TV series National Treasure: Edge of History. Justin Bartha and Harvey Keitel reprised their roles from the film series, but the TV show didn’t catch on, and it was canceled after just one season.

The franchise debuted in 2004, telling the story of a historian, Cages’ Ben Gates, who needed to steal the Declaration of Independence before a group of mercenaries could do so. The sequel upped the ante further and saw Gates kidnapping the President of the United States. The plots were absolutely absurd, as you can tell, but made for fun viewing.

In addition to Cage, Bartha, and Keitel, the franchise featured a range of big-name actors, including Diane Kruger, Sean Bean, Jon Voight, Christopher Plummer, Ed Harris, Bruce Greenwood, and Helen Mirren.

Together, the two National Treasure movies earned close to $1 billion at the box office, not adjusted for inflation. Jerry Bruckheimer produced the series, as well as the recent TV show.

In 2020, it was reported that Disney was moving ahead with National Treasure 3 and had hired people to work on it. This never happened, of course, and Cage’s recent comments suggest it may never, though nothing is ever certain in Hollywood.

Producer Jason Reed explained that Disney never succeeded in turning National Treasure into a bonafide franchise that spanned merchandise and theme park attractions. Moviemaking is a fickle and uncertain business in terms of revenue, and many franchises rely on ancillary revenue sources. But National Treasure never succeeded in that respect.

“I think part of what happened … even though the movies themselves were extremely successful, and had a really strong fanbase; it’s a movie that gets brought up all the time, particularly the first one. Unfortunately, the company was never able to capitalize on it as a franchise,” Reed said. “It makes it look harder to a company like Disney to focus resources on something when they can go make Toy Story or go buy a cruise ship.”