National Treasure 3 Is 'Finally Real,' Jon Turteltaub Says — But Nicolas Cage Isn't Signed Yet

After nearly two decades of false starts, National Treasure 3 has moved closer to actually happening.

Director Jon Turteltaub told a live audience at Philadelphia’s first National Treasure Weekend on August 21 that the third film is “finally real” — with an important Hollywood-sized asterisk attached. According to first-hand reporting from The Philadelphia Inquirer, Turteltaub said there is now a script he likes and that Disney responded that it “sounds like a movie we can make.”

That is a meaningful step forward. It is not the same thing as a production greenlight.

There is still no announced filming date, release date or confirmed cast. Disney has not issued a formal movie announcement, and neither Disney nor Nicolas Cage has publicly confirmed that Cage has signed to return as Ben Gates. Variety and TheWrap both reported the project as moving forward while stopping short of treating Cage’s involvement as a completed deal.

Nicolas Cage Is the Plan, Not a Confirmed Casting

Turteltaub said that, “to whatever extent we can, everyone’s back.” That clearly signals an attempt to reunite the original cast, but it should not be turned into a casting announcement.

TheWrap described Cage and other original stars as being in talks to return. No deal has been announced.

That distinction matters because Cage’s own position has changed sharply over the past two years. In March 2024, he dismissed the possibility of a third movie and told ScreenRant that there was no National Treasure 3. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer kept saying the project was alive, and by March 2026 he described development as “coming along quite well.”

Turteltaub’s new update is the strongest public sign yet that the movie has cleared one of its longest-running obstacles: finding a version of the script that the filmmaker and studio both want to keep pursuing.

Who Wrote the Current National Treasure 3 Script?

This is the part of the story that needs more caution than some early coverage is giving it.

Ted Elliott is definitely part of the movie’s development history. In a 2024 interview with the National Treasure Hunt podcast, Elliott said he had completed a first draft featuring Ben Gates, Riley Poole and Abigail Chase, along with other familiar faces.

But that does not prove Elliott alone wrote the version Turteltaub discussed in Philadelphia.

Chris Bremner was hired to work on National Treasure 3 in 2020, and reporting in March 2026 again identified Bremner as working on the current script. Public production listings now associate both Bremner and Elliott with the project. Crucially, the latest reports from Turteltaub’s Philadelphia appearance do not identify the writer of the script that he and Disney now like.

So the safest current description is simple: National Treasure 3 has a script that Turteltaub and Disney are positive about, but the final public writing credit is not yet clear.

Diane Kruger as Abigail Chase, Justin Bartha as Riley Poole and Nicolas Cage as Ben Gates in National Treasure: Book of Secrets. Credit: Disney.

Is Edge of History Still Canon?

Possibly — but this is another place where an older draft should not automatically be treated as the final movie.

Elliott said in 2024 that his draft treated the Disney+ series National Treasure: Edge of History as canon. That version therefore kept Harvey Keitel’s FBI agent Peter Sadusky dead after the character’s fate in the series.

The show premiered in 2022 and lasted one season before Disney canceled it. Justin Bartha and Keitel both reprised their film roles in the series.

Because the current script’s exact writing history has not been publicly clarified, it is safer to say that Elliott’s 2024 draft treated the series as canon rather than claiming Turteltaub has now reconfirmed every continuity decision from that version.

What About Page 47?

The biggest unresolved tease from National Treasure: Book of Secrets is still Page 47 of the President’s Book of Secrets.

Nothing Turteltaub said in Philadelphia confirms that Page 47 is the central mystery of the third film. No plot synopsis has been released, and no treasure, villain or historical conspiracy has been announced.

The one thematic clue Turteltaub did offer was broader. He told the Inquirer that the political climate has made a new National Treasure harder to navigate and that the next movie should acknowledge political division without turning the story into something that pushes half the audience away.

For now, that is more concrete than any Page 47 theory.

Why Disney Still Has a Reason to Make It

The first two films remain a strong commercial argument for another adventure.

National Treasure earned about $347 million worldwide in 2004, while National Treasure: Book of Secrets reached about $459 million in 2007. Together, they made roughly $806 million worldwide, and TheWrap notes that they remain among Cage’s highest-grossing live-action films.

That box-office history does not guarantee a sequel nearly twenty years later. But for the first time in a long time, the question is no longer whether somebody is writing another draft.

There is a script Turteltaub likes. Disney likes it enough to keep moving. The original cast is the target.

Now the movie needs the things that turn “Hollywood real” into simply real: signed actors, a production start and an official release date.