National Treasure 3 Gets Surprising Update

National Treasure 3 could still happen -- and if so, the movie will consider its short-lived TV spinoff as canon.

By Russ Burlingame

If National Treasure 3 finally gets made, the movie will feature both new and returning characters not just from the first two films -- but also from the short-lived National Treasure: Edge of History. The series drew mostly positive reviews, but failed to capture a big enough audience for Disney+, who cancelled it after one 10-episode season.  Alongside young, diverse cast of characters, the series brought back Justin Bartha's Riley and Harvey Keitel's Sandusky from the original movies. In a new interview, screenwriter Ted Elliot said that Riley will be a focus in the new screenplay, and that his development int he TV series won't be ignored.

That also means Sandusky is dead, so Keitel won't be back for the third film (or, if he is, it will be in flashback or some similar device). Elliot teased "a change" to Ben and Riley's "inner relationship" in the planned threequel.

"Riley has changed more [than anybody else]," Elliot told ScreenRant. "If you just look at the two points that are established for him in the first and second movies. In the first one, he is the uninformed audience....That's the role he plays. He's the guy who says, 'What are you talking about there?' In the second one he's written a book about cryptohistory. And he's right! He knows something Ben didn't know about history. I just have to think that that's continued. It becomes more difficult to do the history exposition because...there are things [Riley] can know now."

Along with those changes, Elliot said that one thing he wants to do is find a different role for the FBI, although he stopped short of saying just what would change.

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"I'm trying to do something different with the FBI than was done in the previous two movies," Elliot said. "There's still the pursuers, there's still the force for law and order, but just the way they operate I'm trying to do something just a little bit different."

National Treasure arrived in theaters back in 2004, and was a critical and commercial success. Three years later, audiences got National Treasure: Book of Secrets, which was still a commercial hit, although audiences and critics were a bit more split on it. Since then, there have been constant rumors about a possible third movie. The rumors have ebbed and flowed, with almost everybody involved in the franchise saying they would be happy to come back, including actor Nicolas Cage and director Jon Turtletaub. The TV series, which aired in 2022 and 2023, was an attempt to bring the franchise back after it seemed National Treasure 3 had run out of steam, but ever since the show debuted, enthusiasm for the sequel seems to be renewed.

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