It’s been 15 years since National Treasure: Book of Secrets arrived in cinemas, and it could be too late for a new sequel.
The National Treasure franchise has been dormant since 2007, but when Disney announced that they would be adapting the Nicolas Cage and Diane Kruger-starring movie into a series, fans began to get excited to see a continuation of the treasure hunting adventure return to the big screen. However, the new outing will actually feature an all-new cast in a TV series heading to Disney+, and when it comes to a third movie, Diane Kruger isn’t holding her breath for a call anytime soon. The actress is currently appearing alongside Jessica Chastain and others in The 355, but recently said that she may now be getting too old to take another crack at a new National Treasure movie.
“I really don’t know. No one ever contacted me about the third one, so I don’t know,” Kruger shared with ComicBook.com. “I feel like, at this point, we’re way too old. I don’t know. I mean, I would say, ‘Never say never,’ but it’s been it’s been a minute, you know?”
National Treasure initially hit cinemas in 2004, with Cage leading an ensemble cast including Sean Bean, Harvey Keitel, Jon Voight and Christopher Plummer and grossed just under $350 million. The sequel, National Treasure: Book of Secrets arrived three years later, bringing back the majority of the cast along with the addition of Ed Harris and Helen Mirren, and defying all odds, the movie proved even more popular than its predecessor with a near $460 million haul at the box office. A year after the sequel arrived, Disney registered IP for the domain names of future films, and it was announced that there would be further installments but that the team would take their time.
National Treasure 3 Seemed Certain, But It Didn’t Fit With Disney’s Plans.
After 15 years, the chances of National Treasure 3 seem slimmer than ever, even if there are currently being a lot of legacy sequels bringing back older franchises after decades in hiatus. The decision to turn the franchise into a rebooted TV series seems to be a final nail in the coffin, but as Disney production executive Jason Reed told Collider last year, it seems that the project was just tricky for Disney to integrate into their grander scheme fully. He said:
“They never figured out a way to integrate it into the parks. It never caught on, even though there were a lot of consumer products, it never caught on as an independent franchise. That makes the numbers look different. It makes it harder to make a company like Disney focus resources on something when they can go make Toy Story or buy a cruise ship. And if the company itself had been really excited about moving forward with it and thought they could blow it out, we would have found a way to make the deal.”
With all that in mind, the last word to come on the long-gestating sequel came as late as January, when it was announced that the film would be moving ahead with a Chris Bremner script and Jerry Bruckheimer producing. Whether that film is now dead in the water could depend on exactly how the series is received when it arrives on Disney+ sometime in the next year.
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