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Why National Treasure 3 was never made by Disney

Photo credit: Disney
Photo credit: Disney

From Digital Spy

National Treasure's former executive producer Jason Reed has explained why a third film was never made at Disney.

The first two films in the action-adventure series, which starred Nicholas Cage, Justin Bartha and Diane Kruger, were a major success at the box office, bringing in almost half a billion worldwide.

While a third instalment of the treasure-hunting series is now reportedly in the works, along with a Disney+ spin-off series, it's surprising it's taken more than a decade to happen.

Photo credit: Disney
Photo credit: Disney

“I tried my damnedest to get National Treasure 3 up. I love those movies. I worked on those from inception,” Reed told Collider.

"What I felt happened is even though the movies were extremely successful and had a really strong fanbase, it’s a movie that gets brought up all the time, the company was never able to capitalise on it as a franchise. It was more of a movie with a sequel and National Treasure 3 would have been another sequel."

Reed went on to explain how, unlike franchises like Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Disney were unable to find a way to generate fresh merchandise and theme park attractions out of National Treasure.

Photo credit: Getty Images
Photo credit: Getty Images

“They never figured out a way to intergrade it into the parks,” he continued. "It never caught on, even though there were a lot of consumer products, it never caught on as an independent franchise.

"That makes the numbers look different. It makes it harder to make a company like Disney focus resources on something when they can go make Toy Story or buy a cruise ship. And if the company itself had been really excited about moving forward with it and thought they could blow it out, we would have found a way to make the deal."


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