National Treasure 3: Why the Wait?

by Ray Keating

Analysis

DisneyBizJournal.com

January 21, 2020

The National Treasure movies fall into my “guilty pleasures” basket. That basket houses an assortment of movie franchises, such as the Fast & Furious films and the Gerard Butler “Fallen” movies.

So, I actually was pleased to hear last week that Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer are moving forward to bring Ben Gates (yes, played by Nichols Cage) back to break codes, track down treasure and toy with historical facts.

But should people be surprised? 

Well, National Treasure (2004) raked in $348 million on a $100 million production budget, and then National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007) pulled in $457 million on a production budget of $130 million. That makes the first two movies in the series quite profitable.

So, the real surprise here is that it’s taken Disney and Bruckheimer more than a dozen years to get moving on National Treasure 3. Perhaps we’ll finally figure out what’s on page 47.

Ray Keating is the editor, publisher and economist for DisneyBizJournal.com, and author of The Disney Planner 2020: The TO DO List Solutionand the Pastor Stephen Grant novels. He can be contacted at  raykeating@keatingreports.com.