Director Jon Turteltaub has confirmed that a third National Treasure film starring Nicolas Cage is officially in development.
Speaking during a live recording of the National Treasure Hunt podcast on August 21, Turteltaub told the audience that the long-awaited project is moving forward.
"I was thinking about mentioning this tonight, I’ll say it tonight," he said. "It’s happening. You’re the first people I have said this out loud to."
The director, who helmed the 2004 original and its 2007 sequel National Treasure: Book of Secrets, said the project is "finally real".
He noted that a script has been written and approved by both him and Disney. According to Turteltaub, the studio told him it "sounds like a movie we can make." Producer Jerry Bruckheimer has also given the script his "blessing", the podcast noted on Instagram.
However, Turteltaub cautioned that film projects can be unpredictable.
"Now, it’s ‘Hollywood real,’ meaning things can happen," he explained. "Nic gets hit by a bus, there’s no National Treasure. If I get hit by a bus, there’s probably a National Treasure. Welcome to Hollywood, that’s Hollywood."
National Treasure franchise history
The original film followed historian Ben Gates, played by Cage, alongside Dr. Abigail Chase (Diane Kruger) and Riley Poole (Justin Bartha) as they stole the Declaration of Independence to find a map to a lost Freemason treasure. Jon Voight and Harvey Keitel also starred, and the group returned for the 2007 sequel.
The franchise later expanded with a short-lived 2022 Disney+ series, National Treasure: Edge of History, which featured cameos from Bartha and Keitel. The television show referenced a cliffhanger from the second movie regarding a mysterious page 47 in the Book of Secrets, mentioned by the United States President, played by Bruce Greenwood.
Bruckheimer, who produced both films and the spinoff series, gave a positive update on the third film's status in a 2022 interview with E! News.
"We said we'd like to make another National Treasure and they said, 'Sure, let's come up with a new cast,' " Bruckheimer said. "At the same time, we were developing National Treasure for the theaters with Nicolas Cage, which we still are. So, that's ongoing."
Upcoming 2026 film releases
While the third National Treasure film awaits further details, a slate of other movies is scheduled for release throughout the remainder of 2026.
August releases include the romantic film One Night Only on August 7, starring Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro as strangers searching for love in New York City. The End of Oak Street follows on August 14, starring Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway as members of the Platt family who must stick together after a cosmic event transports their suburban neighborhood to an unknown location. PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie releases the same day, featuring the pups crash-landing on an uncharted tropical island filled with dinosaurs for a series of high-stakes rescues.
The comedy Spa Weekend opens on August 21, starring Leslie Mann, Isla Fisher, Michelle Buteau, and Anna Faris as four lifelong friends making bad decisions at a luxury retreat. Director Ridley Scott's post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller The Dog Stars, starring Jacob Elordi, Margaret Qualley, Josh Brolin, and Guy Pearce, closes the month on August 28.
September and October 2026 premieres
The sequel Practical Magic 2 arrives on September 11, reuniting Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock as the witchy Owens sisters from the 1998 classic, alongside Lee Pace, Joey King, and Maisie Williams. The romantic comedy The Love Hypothesis, based on the New York Times bestseller, debuts on Prime Video on September 23. It stars Lili Reinhart as Ph.D. candidate Olive and Tom Bateman as professor Adam Carlsen, whose fake relationship turns into an experiment in chemistry.
Netflix releases Unabomber on September 25, a film inspired by true events detailing Harvard prodigy Ted Kaczynski's transformation into a domestic terrorist. Jacob Tremblay stars as Kaczynski, alongside Russell Crowe, Shailene Woodley, and Annabelle Wallis.
October begins with the psychological thriller Verity on October 2, adapted from Colleen Hoover's bestselling novel. It stars Anne Hathaway as renowned author Verity Crawford and Dakota Johnson as struggling ghostwriter Lowen Ashleigh, who relocates to the remote Crawford estate. On October 9, writer and director Aaron Sorkin's The Social Reckoning releases in theatres. Billed as a companion piece to 2010's The Social Network, it follows a young Facebook engineer (Mikey Madison) and a Wall Street Journal reporter (Jeremy Allen White) blowing the whistle on Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) and the social network's most guarded secrets.
The action-packed adventure film Matchbox The Movie, inspired by the Mattel toys, premieres on Apple TV on October 9. John Cena stars as an undercover CIA agent who embroils his childhood friends in a frantic international pursuit to save the world.
Late autumn and holiday blockbusters
A new adaptation of Jane Austen's beloved novel Sense and Sensibility opens on October 16, starring Daisy Edgar-Jones as Elinor Dashwood, alongside Fiona Shaw, Caitríona Balfe, George MacKay, and Esmé Creed-Miles. A live-action adaptation of the legendary arcade game Street Fighter also opens on October 16, starring Noah Centineo, Jason Momoa, and 50 Cent as the iconic fighters. The unconventional love story Wicker, starring Alexander Skarsgard transforming for his role as a Wicker Husband made for Olivia Colman's ostracised fisherwoman, arrives in select theatres on October 23 before expanding on October 30.
An animated adaptation of Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat opens on November 6, featuring the voices of Bill Hader, Quinta Brunson, Bowen Yang, and America Ferrera. On November 20, The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping arrives. The highly anticipated prequel revisits the world of Panem to follow a young Haymitch Abernathy (Joseph Zada) 24 years before the events of The Hunger Games, and stars Glenn Close, Whitney Peak, Elle Fanning, Ralph Fiennes, Mckenna Grace, and Maya Hawke.
The Meet the Parents franchise returns with a new chapter, Focker-In-Law, on November 25, reuniting Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro alongside Ariana Grande. The animated coming-of-age saga Hexed also opens on November 25, starring Hailee Steinfeld as an impulsive teenage girl named Billie who discovers secret magical abilities and journeys out of suburbia to a vast witch realm called Hexe.
The year concludes with two major sequels on December 18: the fifth installment of the Avengers film series, Avengers: Doomsday, featuring a star-studded cast of returning Marvel Cinematic Universe fan-favorites, and director Denis Villeneuve's epic trilogy conclusion, Dune: Part Three. The Dune sequel, available in theatres and IMAX, stars Zendaya, Timothée Chalamet, Jason Momoa, Florence Pugh, Rebecca Ferguson, Anya Taylor-Joy, Robert Pattinson, and Javier Bardem. Finally, Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillan, Jack Black, and Kevin Hart return for the final installment of the reboot trilogy about a magical board game in Jumanji: Open World on December 25.
