Anna Daniels
National Treasure 3 was first announced all the way back in 2008, with series director Jon Turteltaub telling the press that a team of writers was on the case while doing promotional interviews for the second flick’s DVD release. Whatever team it was in charge of penning the third flick, though, they proceeded to fumble the ball repeatedly for the next decade.
Five years later, in 2013, Turteltaub told Collider, “It’s so damn hard to write a great historical mystery based on fact. It’s not for lack of trying. We want to do the movie. Disney wants to do the movie. We’re just having the damnedest time, writing it… I’ll bet that within two years, we’ll be shooting that movie.”
The director would have lost that bet. National Treasure 3 was mentioned as still being a work in progress by Cage in 2016, then by Turteltaub again in 2018; at that time, he said the script was “close,” and we’re beginning to think that this is a man with a habit of just saying things, regardless of their basis in reality.
At any rate, in January 2020, Disney went back to the drawing board, tapping Chris Bremner (Bad Boys for Life) to get to work on a completely new iteration of the screenplay (via Variety). We kind of expect Turteltaub to pop up at any moment to opine that the flick could be in theaters in a matter of weeks. Of course, considering the torrid pace at which Cage has been making movies of late, it wouldn’t be that far outside the realm of possibility.
Written by: Looper
