Director Jon Turteltaub swears National Treasure 3 is finally happening

Benjamin Franklin Gates fans have been burned before, but Turteltaub swears there's now a National Treasure 3 script that everybody involved thinks will work.

By William Hughes  |  August 22, 2026 | 7:02pm
Nicolas Cage in National Treasure, Screenshot: YouTube
Film News National Treasure
Director Jon Turteltaub swears National Treasure 3 is finally happening

National Treasure is one of those franchises that a certain subset of the population gets surprisingly rabid over; despite the fact that the whole thing adds up to just two two-decade old movies, plus a Disney+ streaming show that was short-lived even by those very low standards, people continue to pine weirdly hard for the return of Nicolas Cage’s Benjamin Franklin Gates, and his various quests that can only be solved by giving security guards at the National Archives grief. Now, after at least six years of teases and speculation, franchise director Jon Turteltaub is toying with the ridiculously cyphered hearts of National Treasure fans once again, revealing that a National Treasure 3 is actually happening.

Per Deadline, Turteltaub was speaking at—where else?—a live recording of the apparently extremely successful National Treasure Hunt podcast when he broke the news to a crowd of what seemed to be genuinely emotionally affected fans. The director (who served as an executive producer on National Treasure: Edge Of History, but whose last cinematic directing work was in Jason Statham Vs. Giant Shark movie The Meg) played coy initially, telling fans that he’d debated dropping the info. But then he seemingly confirmed it: A script has been written and approved by all relevant parties, including Disney, and so the third movie might finally see the light of day. 

Are we a little skeptical? Sure: Jerry Bruckheimer was claiming everything was ready to move forward way back in 2022, only for nothing to materialize, and the sheer fact that Edge Of History got canned after just 10 Cage-free episodes doesn’t necessarily speak well to the series’ long-term franchise potential. But Turteltaub himself seemed pretty enthused to be dropping the news, declaring “It’s finally happening” to a room full of fans, and later apparently confirming that Cage was onboard for the project. (Provided the film itself doesn’t get heisted, in the manner of his recent flick Fortitude at Netflix; Hollywood does love a too-cute-for-its-own-good meta take, so a National Treasure 3 about stealing a National Treasure movie might be right up its alley.)

 
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