Disney revealed just last year that its National Treasure franchise would be pivoting to the small screen for an all-new TV series, though some fans would surely like to see a third big-screen adventure featuring the original stars, yet Diane Kruger recently cast doubt on such a sequel ever happening. While she’s not ruling it out entirely, having not heard any updates about such a sequel since 2007’s National Treasure: Book of Secrets has led her to believe that the cinematic adventures of the series have run their course. Kruger can next be seen in The 355, which hits theaters on January 7th.
“I really don’t know. No one ever contacted me about the third one, so I don’t know,” Kruger shared with ComicBook.com. “I feel like, at this point, we’re way too old. I don’t know. I mean, I would say, ‘Never say never,’ but it’s been it’s been a minute, you know?”
The upcoming Disney+ series is set to be a reimagining of the concept, which will be written by original writers Marianne and Cormac Wibberley and will have original producer Jerry Bruckheimer also involved in developing the project.
Given the number of brands that Disney has on its roster and the ways in which the company has been able to cross-promote such titles, Disney production executive Jason Reed shared last year that he believes a third film never moved forward due to the studio having difficulty integrating it into parks or other experiences.
“I tried my damnedest to get National Treasure 3 up. I love those movies. I worked on those from inception,” Reed shared with Collider previously. “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 capitalize on it as a franchise. It was more of a movie with a sequel and National Treasure 3 would have been another sequel.”
He added, “They never figured out a way to integrate it into the parks. 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.”
Stay tuned for details on the future of the National Treasure franchise.
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