Jon Turteltaub confirmed that National Treasure 3 was “finally real” and moving forward, almost two decades after Nicolas Cage last played treasure hunter Benjamin Gates on the big screen. Turteltaub, who directed both the previous films, made the announcement during a recording of the National Treasure Hunt podcast in Philadelphia on Friday, telling the audience that they were the first people to hear him say it publicly. I have not said anything before this, but you deserve to have the scoop.” “It’s finally real,” he said.
Nic gets hit by a bus, there’s no National Treasure 3. If I get hit by a bus, there’s probably a National Treasure 3. Welcome to Hollywood.” Turteltaub said the team had “finally” produced a script he liked and that Disney had responded that it “sounds like a movie we can make”.
He hoped to get back the original cast “to whatever extent we can”, including Cage. The Independent has contacted representatives for Disney and Cage for comment. National Treasure, released in 2004, stars Cage as historian and treasure hunter Benjamin Gates, who discovers that the Declaration of Independence contains a hidden clue to a legendary treasure and sets out to steal the document before his rival can reach it.
Diane Kruger plays archivist Abigail Chase, while Justin Bartha stars as Gates’s friend Riley Poole, with Jon Voight, Harvey Keitel, and Sean Bean also in the cast. Although the film was a critical failure, with a critics’ score of 47 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes, it made $347.5m worldwide on a 100m budget. The sequel, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, arrived in December 2007, bringing back Cage, Kruger, Bartha, Voight, and Keitel, and adding Helen Mirren and Ed Harris.
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The film sees Gates trying to clear his ancestor’s name after a missing page from John Wilkes Booth’s diary appears to implicate them in Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. The search leads Gates to the mysterious Book of Secrets, a supposed collection of classified information held by US presidents. The sequel reportedly cost $130m to make and took home $459.2m worldwide.
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