National Treasure 3 Moves Forward as Jon Turteltaub Says It’s Happening
Director Jon Turteltaub says a third National Treasure film now has a script he and Disney can live with. Nicolas Cage is expected back as Benjamin Gates, though the director put the news in properly cautious Hollywood terms.
Jon Turteltaub says National Treasure 3 is happening. The director of the 2004 film and its 2007 sequel said at a live National Treasure Hunt podcast event on Friday, August 21, that the long-discussed third movie is now “finally real,” AOL reported. Nicolas Cage is expected to return as Benjamin Gates, the historian with the face of a man who has just found a clue in your desk drawer. For film readers, the change is simple: after years of maybes, jokes, and no-comment fog, the project now has a script Turteltaub says he likes, and Disney has treated it as a movie it could make.
Jon Turteltaub Put National Treasure 3 on the Record
Turteltaub made the announcement during a live taping of the National Treasure Hunt podcast in Philadelphia, JOE reported. He told the crowd it was the first time he had said it publicly.
That matters because this is the kind of sequel that has lived for years in the soft middle distance, where producers sound hopeful, actors sound careful, and fans are left to hold the map upside down. This time, the director attached his own name to the news in front of a room.
AOL reported that Turteltaub said the movie is “Hollywood real,” which is a funny and useful phrase. It means real enough to discuss, not real enough to book a babysitter for opening weekend. He joked that if Cage were hit by a bus, there would be no National Treasure 3, while if Turteltaub himself were hit by one, there probably would be.
That is a director making a joke, but it also tells you where the weight sits. This thing depends on Cage.
Nicolas Cage Is the Piece the Movie Needs
The reports stop short of a public confirmation from Cage himself. JOE reported that no casting has been announced and that Cage’s representative had not commented. AOL, The News International and Webindia123 all described Cage as expected or set to return, with that confidence coming from Turteltaub’s remarks and the podcast’s account of the night.
That distinction is not small print. It is the difference between a man being handed the hat and a room saying the hat is waiting for him.
Cage’s Benjamin Gates is not a superhero, although he behaves with the certainty of one when a founding document is in danger. He is a historian, a treasure hunter, a cryptographer, and the rare movie lead who can look both brilliant and faintly embarrassed by his own plan. The first film asks him to steal the Declaration of Independence to protect it. That is a sentence that should collapse under its own weight. Cage made it move.
