‘National Treasure 3’ Director Jon Turteltaub Says the Franchise Can No Longer Ignore Politics

Few adventure franchises have managed to sit as comfortably across the political aisle as ‘National Treasure,’ a series built around the Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers, and a very particular brand of American patriotism that seemed to appeal equally to audiences on both sides of the spectrum. That broad appeal helped turn the 2004 original and its 2007 sequel into enduring favorites, even as nearly two decades passed without a third installment ever materializing.

That long wait finally ended this past weekend, when director Jon Turteltaub surprised a live audience in Philadelphia with news fans had been chasing for years. During a taping of the ‘National Treasure Hunt’ podcast at the Independence Visitor Center, part of the city’s first-ever National Treasure Weekend, Turteltaub confirmed that a third film starring Nicolas Cage is officially moving forward, with a finished script he and Disney both like already in hand.

Alongside that announcement, Turteltaub offered an unexpectedly candid explanation for why the sequel had taken so long to come together, one rooted less in creative hesitation and more in the country’s shifting political climate. According to Turteltaub, the franchise’s long-standing reputation as a rare Hollywood export both sides of the aisle could embrace has grown harder to maintain as audiences increasingly read political meaning into everything they watch.

Turteltaub illustrated that shift with a specific memory from the original film’s release, recalling how former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy once called him out of the blue requesting a private congressional screening of ‘National Treasure,’ apparently surprised that a movie he considered patriotic had been made by people he assumed leaned Democratic. According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, which was present at the event, Turteltaub said that kind of assumption has only intensified over the years, with each side increasingly building its own caricature of the other.

That dynamic, Turteltaub explained, is something the new film can’t simply sidestep. “We have to be very careful, but I don’t feel we are allowed to ignore it,” he said. “I think we have to include that idea in the story somehow without making someone feel put off.”

Not all reaction to Turteltaub’s comments have been positive. Speaking to Fox News Digital, film critic Christian Toto, founder of Hollywood in Toto, said he understood the instinct to revisit a beloved older franchise for nostalgia but expressed disappointment that politics might factor into the story at all, arguing that a series built around American history “should be nothing” but apolitical. Toto suggested the safest path forward would be for the film to acknowledge the country’s political divide without letting it define the plot, adding that striking that balance could even make the sequel the franchise’s biggest installment yet.

Turteltaub offered few other concrete details about the film beyond confirming that Cage and the rest of the original cast are expected to return “to whatever extent” scheduling allows. No release date, plot specifics, or filming locations have been announced.

With the franchise’s political tightrope now part of the public conversation before a single frame has been shot, ‘National Treasure 3’ faces a genuinely unusual challenge for a summer adventure movie: figuring out how to acknowledge a divided audience without alienating either half of it.

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